CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Judge Rejects CACI’s Attempt To Dismiss Torture Case
In April 2003, the George W. Bush administration led an illegal invasion of Iraq based on lies about weapons of mass destruction. That war resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. After the invasion, there was a mass roundup of Iraqis – primarily men and boys – with no plan or proper basis for detention. The United States then turned to contractors (mercenaries) to assist with interrogations and provide interpretation services, many of whom lacked proper training. Indeed, the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were the most outsourced in U.S. history. It was against this backdrop that the horrors we all saw in the photos of Abu Ghraib happened.
In Iraq, unlike Guantanamo (and the CIA “blacksites”), there was never any question that the Geneva Conventions applied – and torture was illegal. CACI, a U.S. corporation, contracted with the United States military to provide interrogation services to the U.S. Army at Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
In 2008, Iraqi civilians Suhal Al Shimari, Salah Al-Ejaili, and Asa’ad Al-Zubae filed a lawsuit against CACI under the Alien Tort Statute seeking damages for the torture and abuse they suffered while detained at Abu Ghraib. The three plaintiffs allege that CACI employees conspired with and aided and abetted U.S. military personnel in subjecting them to torture; cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; and war crimes, in violation of international law. A U.S. Army General called their treatment “sadistic, blatant, and wanton.”
On July 31, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia rejected CACI’s attempts to have the case dismissed.
Guest – Katherine Gallagher is a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where she specializes in the enforcement of human rights, including the prohibition against torture. She is one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit against CACI.
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Three of Newburgh Four Released
On July 25, a judge ordered the compassionate release of three of the so-called “Newburgh Four” — Onta Williams, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen. The men, who are Black Muslims from Newburgh, New York, were convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison on terrorism charges in 2011.
In the July release order, US District Court Judge Colleen McMahon suggested that the FBI had “invented” a conspiracy. She said that FBI agents had used an “unscrupulous operative” to persuade the four to join in a plan to bomb a synagogue in the Bronx and fire Stinger missiles at military planes at Stewart Airport near Newburgh, New York. While bombs were, in fact, left outside a synagogue in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, they were fakes built by the FBI.
Guest – Kathy Manley, New York appellate attorney joins us to talk about this late-in-coming victory. Among her many victories was the 2015 case of People v. Diack, which struck down county and local sex offender residence restrictions throughout New York State. Kathy works with several civil rights groups, including the Coalition Of Civil Freedoms.
Hosted by Attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Marjorie Cohn
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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The Coming War On China
Today we re-broadcast a recent interview we did with the great Australian journalist John Pilger about his film titled The Coming War On China. With the exception of a short break at the conclusion in 1975 of the Vietnamese war, the United States has been at war continually. The momentum of what President Eisenhower warned us against and described as being led by, “the military industrial complex” has been going on with successive wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now the American proxy war in Ukraine. The military industrial complex has been augmented by support from the CIA, Congress, and the corporate media.
As Pilger demonstrates, the United States, is building up for a war against China. This build up is both military and ideological and shaped by hostile propaganda. In this respect, an alarming full page New York Times article, 11 weeks in the making, and written by seven reporters, appeared on August 5, 2023. The article targeted the American peace organization CODEPINK as well as one of its financial backers. It is a hit piece that has alarmed many of us in the movement. John Pilger gives us the background to it.
Guest – John Pilger covered that war as a young reporter and understood that it was based on the lie that Lyndon Johnson told falsely stating that the North Vietnamese had attacked an American ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. Another 1 million people died in the Iraq war That war was based on the now well known lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that he was going to use against us and that he was responsible for 911. A similar campaign of fear mongering is going on now about China. The major news media parrot the government’s fact free line that China is our enemy. In his article “The Coming War With China” John Pilger wrote “a US war against China beckons and we have a responsibility to speak out. We know what is coming. Silence must be broken.”
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Greenwashing Climate Change
As the US presidential election season heats up, so too does the planet. July 2023 was the Earth’s hottest month on record, and as climate scientist Friederike Otto told the Associated Press, “We should not care about July because it’s a record, but because it won’t be a record for long. It’s an indicator of how much we have changed the climate. We are living in a very different world, one that our societies are not adapted to live in very well.”
Indeed, millions of people are suffering at this very moment because of extreme weather, including unrelenting, deadly heat. One might expect that during election season, presidential candidates would be champing at the bit to promote their fabulous plans to save human life on earth, or at least slow its demise, right? I mean, who else has so much influence over changing the course of history than the President of the United States? Well, on the GOP side, the presidential hopefuls have mostly ignored the climate crisis, and some even dismiss it outright as a left-wing hoax.
On the Democrats’ side, we have Joe Biden. Now Biden does not shy away from admitting we have a problem. He appeared for an exclusive interview on the Weather Channel last week, calling climate change the number one issue facing humanity, and that combating climate change is a “core tenet of his presidency.”
Well, it might be a core tenet – a core principle and belief – but has that translated into action? When push comes to shove, in the office of President – and before that in the office of Vice President – has Joe Biden done everything he can to save humanity? Or is he just stating the obvious, because it’s what he thinks that’s what voters want to hear, but is he in any rush to make changes that might alienate big oil and other corporate interests? And what about when he was Vice President, during the Obama administration, which set the stage for the Biden presidency? Do we even remember anymore?
Guest – Andrew Perez, not only remembers, but he has tracked and documented the forks in the road where the Obama Administration could have, but chose not to, take actions that could have slowed the warming of our planet. Andrew Perez is an investigative reporter and senior editor for The Lever, which was just awarded the 2023 Izzy Award for outstanding achievement by Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College for its relentless work “exposing the corrupting influence of corporate power on government and both major parties.” The Center specifically highlighted Andrew’s work for exposing the largest known political donation in U.S. history — Chicago businessman Barre Seid’s $1.6 billion dark money transfer to conservative operative Leonard Leo who served as Donald Trump’s judicial advisor. Andrew relentlessly pursues hypocrisy and corruption among all of the powers-that-be, wherever they fall on the political spectrum: left-right-or-center.
Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith and Maria Hall
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
– A Message From The Law and Disorder Hosts
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Julian Assange and Press Freedom
Facing the possibility of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange’s imminent extradition to the United States, Reporters Without Borders recently launched a week of advocacy meetings and a mobile truck through the streets of Washington DC to urgently call for his release.
The actions were organized after UK High Court Judge Jonathan Swift in June rejected Assange’s appeal against the UK’s order of extradition to the United States. Assange, who is being targeted for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes, is the first publisher prosecuted under the Espionage Act for disclosing government secrets. He faces a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison.
Rebecca Vincent, Director of Campaigns for Reporters Without Borders said: “US policymakers still have the power and the opportunity to make a difference in this case and take a stand for the protection of journalism and press freedom. Our call on the Biden administration is more urgent than ever before: drop the charges, close this case, and free Assange!”
Reporters Without Borders is the only non-governmental organization to have monitored Assange’s entire extradition proceedings despite extensive barriers to observation. In April 2023, its Secretary-General Christophe Deloire and Rebecca Vincent were arbitrarily barred from visiting Assange in Belmarsh prison where he’s been held for more than four years. Reporters Without Borders continues to seek access to the prison and campaign globally for Assange’s release.
Guest – Clayton Weimers, executive director of the US office of Reporters Without Borders. Clayton was previously the organization’s Washington-Based Deputy Director for Advocacy.
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Agent Orange Day: 63rd Anniversary
Although the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Vietnamese people today continue to suffer the debilitating effects of Agent Orange. That’s the deadly dioxin-containing chemical weapon that the U.S. military sprayed over 12 percent of South Vietnam from 1961-1971. Agent Orange poisoned both the people and the land of Vietnam. On August 10, “Agent Orange Day,” we mark the 63rd anniversary of the first spraying of the toxic chemical on Vietnam.
Descendants of the roughly 2 to 4 million Vietnamese people, hundreds of thousands of U.S. Vietnam veterans, and Vietnamese-Americans exposed to Agent Orange and other toxins still suffer. They register disproportionate rates of congenital disabilities and higher rates of several diseases. U.S. veterans receive some limited compensation from the U.S. government, but very little if any assistance has been given to the Vietnamese people, the intended victims targets of the defoliant Agent Orange.
The Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act of 2023 will be introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California). If passed, the bill would increase benefits to children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange. It would also expand research about Agent Orange and its effects on the health of exposed individuals; and provide medical, housing and poverty reduction aid to Vietnamese people, and their children, affected by exposure. And it would help to clean up the many remaining dioxin “hot spots” in Vietnam.
Guest – Paul Cox served in the U.S. Marines during the Vietnam War. He now serves on the board of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign, a project of Veterans for Peace (on whose board Paul also sits). We are fortunate to have Paul with us today to discuss the horrific legacy of what the Vietnamese people call “The American War” and the campaign to provide compensation for the victims of Agent Orange. HR3518 Victims Of Agent Orange Relief Act 2021 / VN-agentorange.org
Hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Marjorie Cohn, and Julie Hurwitz
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Criminalizing Dissent, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers
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Lawyers You’ll Like – Attorney Mel Wulf
Mel Wulf died at age 95 on July 1, 2023. He was one of the great constitutional litigators of his time. He served as Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union for 15 years. Today we bring you a re-broadcast of an interview that attorney Michael Ratner, and I, Michael Smith, did with Mel 10 years ago for a segment we called Lawyers You’ll Like. It is a scintillating fast paced discussion with a relevance to our situation now
We’re joined today by Attorney Mel Wulf, former legal director with the American Civil Liberties Union for 15 years. He was a law partner with former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark during the Kennedy Administration and much more. Wulf was part of some of the greatest contributions to the civil rights movement. He’s now retired after practicing law for 54 years. As part of our Lawyers You’ll Like series, we talk with Wulf about his work with the ACLU during the early 60s, and also about the forming of the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee.
Attorney Mel Wulf:
- Phil Agee was a dissident CIA agent who spent decades working against the CIA, published a couple of books.
- He lost his passport because when the dissidents took over the embassy in Tehran in 1979, the New York Post carried a story accusing Phil of helping the students who’d invaded the embassy to put together all of that written material that had been shredded.
- It was another New York Post bald faced lie.
- The State Department, based upon that story revoked his passport.
- I had represented Phil Agee, I was his principle lawyer for 30 years.
- Agee was very widely disliked in Washington because he was well known to be a CIA dissident who disclosed the names of many CIA agents.
- If Snowden went the same route today, he would do even worse in this Supreme Court than I did. That’s why Snowden won’t get his passport, thanks to me.
- I was for the workers and not for the bosses and I’ve always been for the workers and not for the bosses, which I think is the distinguishing political factor in our world. Which side are you on?
- I got my Bachelors Degree in ’52 and I had a Navy Commission which I had gotten from the New York State Maritime Academy earlier on.
- The draft board sent me a 1A notice, I applied to Columbia and when I finished Columbia they sent me another 1A notice because the draft was still on. I spent 2 years in the Navy as a Liuetenant Junior Grade Officer in Southern California.
- I went to work at the ACLU in 1958 as the assistant legal director, in 1962 I was given the job of the legal director of the ACLU.
- I had actually been going down to Mississippi from 1961 to 1962, working with then one of the two black lawyers who were practicing in Mississippi.
- We tried a couple of capitol cases in Mississippi. I continued to argue the systematic exclusion of blacks from the jury.
- I finally got a case up to the Supreme Court on that issue.
- Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee: We had several hundred lawyers who went down to Mississippi for periods of a week or two. They were representing people being arrested during the Mississippi summer.
- Most of the judges allowed these lawyers to make some sort of presentation.
Guest – Attorney Mel Wulf, former legal director with the American Civil Liberties Union for 15 years. He was a law partner with former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark during the Kennedy Administration and much more. Wulf was part of some of the greatest contributions to the civil rights movement. He’s now retired after practicing law for 54 years.
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Lawyers You’ll Like: Attorney Bill Schaap
Attorney Bill Schaap, who died in 2016, was a friend and colleague of Mel Wulf’s. Bill and his wife, Ellen Ray published the historic whistleblowing magazine “Covert Action Quarterly“ that exposed to CIA. Then they started Sheridan Square Press. They published a number of memoirs of former CIA agents who revealed the truth about the activities of the CIA. Ex-CIA agent Phil Agee was one of Sheridan Square Press authors. He wrote Inside The Company which exposed the names of some 200 CIA agents involved in nefarious activities in South America. Mel Wulf represented Agee for 30 years and unsuccessfully tried to get his passport back when the government had it taken away.
Attorney William Schaap graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1964 and has been a practicing lawyer since. Bill specialized in military law and practiced in Asia and Europe. He later became the editor in chief of the Military Law Reporter in Washington for a number of years. In the 70’s and 80’s he was a staff counsel of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City. In the late 80s, he was an adjunct professor at John J. College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York where he taught courses on propaganda and disinformation.
Attorney William Schaap:
- One of first cases at this big Wall Street firm, they had some outside counsel working on it, one of whom was David Lubel, and Dave Lubel who had I think been a recruiter for the Communist Party in his youth, was always good at spotting somebody who was always worth recruiting and he started to tell me there was this convention of this lawyers group.
- It was this 1967 Lawyers Guild Convention in New York. He dragged me to one event, I met Bill Kunstler, I met Arthur Kinoy, I met Victor Rabbinowitz. I’d been on Wall Street for a year or two, I said I didn’t know there were lawyers like this.
- I joined the same day and met Bernadine Dorhn and a few weeks she called me and said we need your help.
- She said you gotta defend a bunch of Columbia students. The next thing I knew the riot started at Columbia and she said you have to go down there and defend them.
- I signed up to be staff counsel on the National Lawyers Guild Military Law Project in Okinawa, Japan.
- When you work overseas in that kind of a climate with the military you learn a lot fast about American imperialism.
- Once you learn that, you learn about the CIA.
- That led us to originally working on Counter Spy magazine and then on Covert Action Magazine.
- The original purpose was to expose the CIA. We worked with Lou Wolf who is an expert in uncovering CIA agents in US embassies, not through any classified documents but because if you knew how to read the paperwork and State Department things, you could tell who are the “ringers.”
- We were so successful that Congress passed a law against us.
- Our goal was to make these people ineffective because the only way most CIA could work, particularly the ones that were assigned to an embassy was to have to pretend to be something else.
- They were all third assistant political secretaries and those were all phony things. Their job was to finagle their way into various community organizations in whatever foreign capital they were posted to recruit people to turn against their own countries and become traitors to their own countries, to become spies for the U.S.
- We thought if we identified these people, it might make their job a little bit harder, which it did.
- Of course, the problem with that is the government said we were trying to get them killed which we weren’t trying to do and nobody we did expose ever did get killed.
- He (Philip Agee) had been an adviser to Counter Spy. Counter Spy folded when Welch got killed, cause the pressure was too much and started Covert Action Quarterly.
- He was not the person discovering who the under cover people were, Lou Wolf was doing that.
- Phil wrote articles for us in every issue and we worked very closely with him.
- Once you start exposing these things, they really don’t have any defense.
- They tried to catch us in something phony. We would get tips that would turn out to be CIA trying to get us to print some story that wasn’t true so they could then discredit us.
- We had more interference from the government when we were doing military law work, before Covert Action Quarterly.
- They would plant bugs in our attic in Okinawa, things like that.
- The Intelligence Identity Protection Act has 2 parts. One makes it a crime for someone in the government who has classified information to reveal someone’s identity. The second part makes it a crime to reveal the identity of someone you did not learn from classified information or you position. (But if you were in the business of exposing these people . . .)
- Regarding his newsletter The Lies of Our Times – It was in the 90s, from 1990 to 1995 I think. To a certain extent, the abuses we were crying about got a little bit less over time because that’s sometimes the helpful result of that kind of exposure.
- We were just tired of people thinking that if it was in the New York Times it must be true.
- The fact is that those people lie all the time.
- I think we’ve gotten to a point where people recognize that the government lies to them and that there’s an awful lot that goes on that they don’t know.
Guest – Attorney William Schaap graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1964 and has been a practicing lawyer since. Bill specialized in military law and practiced in Asia and Europe. He later became the editor in chief of the Military Law Reporter in Washington for a number of years. In the 70’s and 80’s he was a staff counsel of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City. In the late 80s, he was an adjunct professor at John J. College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York where he taught courses on propaganda and disinformation.
In addition to being a practicing lawyer, Bill was a journalist, publisher and a writer specializing in intelligence as it relates to media. He was the co-publisher of a magazine called the Covert Action Quarterly for more than 20 years. He also published a magazine on propaganda and disinformation titled Lies Of Our Times. Attorney Bill Schapp has written numerous articles and edited many books on the topic of media and intelligence.
Hosted by attorneys Michael Ratner, Michael Smith and Heidi Boghosian
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Violations of U.S. and International Law
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The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast
In 2012, journalist Michael Scott Moore went to Somalia to research a book on piracy. He was abducted by a gang of Somali pirates, who demanded $20 million from the US government. After protracted negotiations, and a payment of $1.6 million dollars, Moore was released—two and a half years later. His international bestseller, The Desert and the Sea, chronicles his 977 days in captivity.
More than a decade later, this past February, two men were convicted in federal court for helping to carry out his kidnapping.
On April 1, Michael sailed with a German rescue ship The Humanity I to write about migration across the central Mediterranean. In a recent piece published in Foreign Policy, Michael makes the connection between human trafficking and migration/asylum-seeking and pirating.
Guest – Michael Scott Moore, in addition to The Desert and the Sea, he has written the highly acclaimed book, Sweetness and Blood, about the history of surfing. He serves on the board of Hostage US, an organization that supports American hostages and their families.
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Nobody’s Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs and Trolls.
In January 2019 New York State passed a bill to outlaw “revenge porn,” joining 41 other states that have passed similar laws. Revenge Porn is the term for the non-consensual sharing on the Internet of sexually explicit photographs or videos. Victims say it can be as damaging as any other form of abuse, but without the legal protections.
Private images can follow victims for years, turning up when employers or romantic partners search for their names on the Internet.
But in New York, victims have experienced years of helplessness in the courts. Prosecutors could not charge offenders for a practice that was not illegal, and judges turned down appeals for help on the grounds of free speech, even while other states were enacting protections. Under New York’s new law, offenders can be punished by up to one year in jail.
The law also allows victims to sue the person who shared the revenge porn, which about a dozen other states also allow. And it would be the first in the nation to allow judges to order websites or social media platforms — in addition to the original poster — to take down the photos or videos.
Most have heard about high-profile instances of sexual images as blackmail or revenge have involving the rich and famous, such as singer Rihanna and actor Jennifer Lawrence. But it affects millions of people, from middle school students to Marines. As many as 10 million Americans have been victims of revenge porn.
Guest – New York Attorney Carrie Goldberg started a law firm to focus on defending victims of the practices. She has just come out with her first book titled Nobody’s Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs and Trolls.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of its Military Machine
From Afghanistan to Iraq and Syria and on to little known deployments in a range of countries worldwide, the United States has been at perpetual war for at least the past two decades. Yet many of these foreign wars remain off the radar of average Americans.
We speak today with author and political analyst Norman Solomon about his new book War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of its Military Machine.
Solomon writes that since the attacks on 9/11, more than 20 years ago, first in the war in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, a hugely consequential shift in (United States) American foreign-policy was set in motion: a perpetual state of war that is almost entirely invisible to the public. Solomon exposes how this happened and what the consequences are, for military and civilian casualties, and the draining of resources at home.
Compliant journalist add to the smokescreen by providing narrow coverage of military engagements, and by repeating the military’s talking points. Meanwhile, the increased use of high technology, air power, and remote drones has put distance between soldiers and the civilians killed in action. Back home, Solomon shows, the cloak of invisibility masks massive Pentagon budgets and receive bi-partisan support even as housing, medical care, education, and infrastructure goes abegging.
Guest – Norman Solomon is cofounder of RootsAction.org executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He’s written many books, but “ War Made Invisible“, is his first one in 15 years. Solomon founded the Institute for Public Accuracy in 1997 and is its executive director. Immersed in anti-war, social justice and environmental movements since the late 1960s, he is the author of a dozen books including “War Made Easy” and “Made Love, Got War.”
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Israel Attacks West Bank City of Jenin
On fourth of July, as we in the US heard fireworks, people in the Palestinian city of Jenin heard real gunfire and fled from real explosions. On July 3, a thousand Israeli Defense Force soldiers descended on the city, with helicopters, drones and bulldozers, to execute a two day bombardment that leveled the city, reduced its buildings to rubble, damaged hospitals, knocked out utilities, and left at least 13 people dead: 12 Palestinians and 1 Israeli soldier. At least 100 were wounded, and now thousands – about 80% of those living in the camp – are without shelter, water or electricity.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres immediately condemned Israel for using excessive force and harming civilians. He’s refused to retract his statement even under enormous pressure from Israel’s UN Ambassador, who called Mr. Guterres’ criticism, “shameful, far-fetched and completely detached from reality.”
A handful of Arab countries and a European Union envoy have also criticized Israel. But others… like the US? Well…. its silence speaks volumes.
Guest – Sandra Tamari is a Palestinian organizer and the Executive Director of Adalah Justice Project, a Palestinian advocacy organization that builds toward collective liberation through labor, cultural, and legislative campaigns. She holds a Master’s degree in Arab Studies from Georgetown University. In May 2012, she was jailed and denied entry into Palestine by Israel because of her work to encourage U.S. churches to divest from the occupation.
Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith and Maria Hall
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