Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Torture, War Resister
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The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story of the Suspect Behind the Largest Security Breach in U.S. History.
We continue to look into the the Bradley Manning story, the biggest whistle-blower case in US history. Attorney Chase Madar joins us in the studio, he’s the author of The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story of the Suspect Behind the Largest Security Breach in U.S. History. The book moves through Manning’s childhood and up to what led him to allegedly upload volumes of classified secret information to Wikileaks. Madar highlights the value of publicly exposing the endless criminal and immoral actions while government secrecy spins out of control, classifying 77 million documents a year. He also asks what can be done to protect Bradley Manning as a whistle-blower. Since his arrest 2 years ago, Manning’s formal court martial proceedings are not scheduled to begin until February 2013, and as many listeners know the most lethal charge is aiding the enemy.
Attorney Chase Madar:
- I worked as a staff attorney for many years at a great non-profit in Bushwick section of Brooklyn doing all kinds of low tech services for Spanish speaking immigrants.
- I quit that and have been writing about foreign affairs. I got put on the sight of Bradley Manning by Tom Englehart, who edits the great TomDispatch web project.
- So many important issues collide in this case, whether its the comparative risk to our security of secrecy versus leaks. How we judge threats, how we misassess threats. How we use solitary confinement as punishment, is it an acceptable punishment?
- What power does information have anyway? A lot of intellectuals think that information has an incredible catalytic effect.
- Bradley Manning enlisted in the Army in October 2007. He’s deployed to Iraq after all kinds of training in Army intelligence in 2009.
- He allegedly begins leaking things in early 2010 and he’s arrested in late May 2010 over 2 years ago now. He was held in solitary confinement, very strict punitive isolation in Quantico Marine Corp base in Virginia, from July 2010 to April 2011.
- We’re looking at 2.5 years of pretrial confinement.
- You can divide up the Wikileaks leaks allegedly supplied by Bradley Manning in 3 categories. Iraq material, thousands of war logs: raw reports file by soldiers, Afghan war logs, it’s a composite of a war that’s weirdly aimless.
- Obama did campaign as the whistle-blower’s best friend, and he has prosecuted twice as many as all previous administrations.
- Here’s one theory I find persuasive. It’s important for Obama to have the intelligence services on his side. This was a way for him to show the CIA that he would go along them.
- I would like to see a serious change in foreign policy which has gone off the rails.
- We haven’t the kind of course correction with Obama that many had hoped for.
- I hope Wikileaks do disrupt foreign policy more. There’s been all kinds of smack talked about Bradley Manning, he’s a weirdo, a malcontent, he did what he did because he’s screwed up, he did because he’s gay.
- His motives are very plain to see in the chat logs between him and the informant.
- The Manning chat logs – they read like a tragic novella.
- So much of our secrecy law is designed to keep the American public in the dark.
- I think we have badly confused being clueless with being safe.
- He comes across as an immensely thoughtful, courageous and very principled young man. In some ways he’s an extreme version of the millennial generation who have a lot of education and potential but find themselves not doing too well.
- His father was in Naval Intelligence and he’d grown up with a sense of patriotic responsibilities.
- What makes him turn on the inside and leak these things?
- He’s asked to look into the arrest and capture by the Iraqi authorities a group of non-violent Iraqi protesters who were handing out pamphlets that were all about corruption in Iraqi government.
- We are light years away from total transparency.
- The main thing is to make records of the court proceedings publicly available.
- I think a guilty conviction and a heavy sentence of at least 50 years is a foregone conclusion.
- The wages of government secrecy, not security but disaster.
- It looks like the court martial won’t begin until January or February.
- Go to the Bradley Manning support network website. Send him a postcard.
- It’s your patriotic duty to browse the leaks.
- Legal Atrocities – by Chase Madar
Guest – Attorney Chase Madar , a TomDispatch regular and author of a new book, The Passion of Bradley Manning (OR Books). Madar tweets @ChMadar. He’s a contributor to the London Review of Books and Le Monde diplomatique and the author of a new book, The Passion of Bradley Manning (OR Books).
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Torture, Truth to Power
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Updates:
- Bradley Manning Trial Update: System of a Star Chamber
- Julian Assange Extradition / Asylum
- Occupy Chicago Tribune WIPO Lawsuit Update:
- Donating to Wikileaks
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Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Filed Over Boycott of Israeli Goods
We follow up on the Olympia Food Co-op lawsuit filed over boycott of Israeli goods earlier this year. For listeners unfamiliar with the case, a judge in Olympia, Washington dismissed a lawsuit tailored to force the Olympia Food Co-op to rescind its boycott of Israeli goods. The judge ruled that the lawsuit brought by opponents of the boycott violated a Washington State law designed to prevent abusive lawsuits which are aimed at suppressing lawful public participation. Interestingly, an investigation by ElectronicIntifada had unearthed that the lawsuit against individuals with the Olympia Food Co-op Board was also planned in collusion with a national anti-Palestinian organization called StandWithUs that was working with the Israeli government. Lawyers with the Center for Constitutional Rights argued that the lawsuit qualified as a SLAPP, that stands for – – Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation. SLAPPs are lawsuits that target the constitutional rights of free speech and petition in connection with an issue of public concern. Recently, the five Olympia Food Co-op members who had sued to overturn the store’s boycott of Israeli goods must pay $160,000 in damages.
Attorney Barbara Harvey:
- The judge had before him the issue whether to assess a single statutory penalty of 10 thousand dollars on behalf of all 16 co-op members who served on co-op board members who were sued by the defendants, or would the judge order each individual statutory penalties to each defendant.
- He decided to order individual statutory penalties to each defendant for a total 160 thousand dollars.
- The plaintiff sued 16 board members past and present. Standwithus produced a youtube video of the five plaintiffs just before they filed the litigation.
- The five co-op members didn’t look upset given the judge’s decision. If they’re not upset, why not? – which suggests the costs will be covered but we really have no way of really knowing that.
- This victory discourages the opponents of the movement for Palestinians to engage in this kind of litigation.
- TIAA-CREF which manages financial assets of 470 plus billion dollars announced that they had decided to remove Caterpillar from their Socially Responsible Investing Accounts.
- That’s because Caterpillar supplies Israel with these militarized bulldozers that are sold under Department of Defense contracts to Israel which are used to tear down civilian homes in Palestine.
- Caterpillar is the poster child of divestment and boycott and TIAA-CREF has done that.
- All other customers that use that SRIA account will be divesting from Caterpillar.
- Our campaign is to persuade companies like TIAA-CREF to divest from companies around the world that profit from the occupation.
Guest – Barbara Harvey, a Detroit attorney who has worked with BDS activists and a former JVP Board Member
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Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism PART 1
Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism is the title of Professor Rick Wolff’s new book. After more than a dozen interviews with Rick Wolff since 2008, the theme is consistent, beyond the corrupt banks and stock markets is a flawed economic system. A system that at worst needed to change direction in the 1970s when wages stopped increasing and the cost of living continued to rise. As we look around, the collapse has been coming down in steps, and many have been trying to dial back, save and prepare. This, as millions have lost their jobs, 401ks, pensions, and homes. Overseas, the waves of austerity continue to push through Europe as protests have erupted again in Spain.
Professor Rick Wolff:
- The book is an interesting venture for me, it’s done with David Barsamian, with Alternative Radio.
- He did 3 major interviews with me, the response was so heartwarming, we published a written version of them.
- The book is an overview of how we got into this mess, why it’s lasting so long, why it’s hurting so badly, why government policies have in fact, not succeeded.
- A number of the economies in Europe are on the edge of major breakdown. Spain is already in that situation, Italy is right on its heels. This is not like Greece or Portugal, Ireland or Hungary who are smaller economies, these are major economies.
- There is active debate in the highest circles of Europe, both critics of capitalism and its leaders, questioning whether the European Union can survive . . its a measure of how serious the problem is.
- China, by its own announcing running at a rate of growth of 7- 8 percent which is half of what it had very few years ago.
- It can’t also escape the effect of Europe which is its second most important market.
- China is trying to reorient the economy away from their dependence from exports to the rest of the world because frankly that’s not a reliable situation for them. To give you one index.
- As wages in the United States stagnated, wages in China have gone up 20 percent.
- The slow downs in India, very sharp. The slow downs in Brazil, very sharp.
- The consensus is what Bernanke said. Things are very poor, very weak and we really have to be alert.
- The situation is only going to deteriorate over the rest of 2012 and into early 2013.
- When a capitalistic economic system begins to unravel. . . we’re in the fifth year of this crisis. It officially began in December 2007.
- Every major government program, the bailouts, the stimulus has not achieved the goals it said it could and would.
- The biggest capitalist institutions in this country at this time, the banks. . .are in such trouble are so worried about their own prospects in an economy in such difficulty that what they are doing is taking excessive risks, pushing the envelope of what’s ethical and moral and crossing the thin and blurry lines of legality.
- LIBOR – London Interbank Offered Rate – Starting in the 1980s, London which had been the financial center of the world economy realized what we all understood at that time which was the world economy was becoming dependent on credit.
- Every corporation was borrowing money all the time, every government was borrowing money on a scale we’ve never seen before, the really innovative thing was the development of consumer credit.
- The LIBOR became the benchmark for the world.
- Everyday the British Bankers Association polls the 16 biggest banks who have offices in England, what they are charging each other.
- It takes an average and it announces that. That number is a standard number for example, variable rate mortgages in the US where the mortgage goes up and down those are based on LIBOR.
- It’s factored into everybody’s borrowing. If you’re going into store to buy a pair of pants, that store also borrowed money which is also shaped by a relationship to LIBOR.
- These banks are the biggest holders of debt instruments. Derivatives of all kinds, mortgages of all kinds. You are relying on information from somebody who has an active interest in the information they’re supplying.
- What we now know is these banks often reported an interest rate different from what they were actually charging.
- There was no oversight.
- The world of superbanking is a very cozy world. Barclay’s had admitted to reporting a number that was actually the case. . . and had paid fines now totalling 450 million dollars to both US and British authorities.
- To be blunt they screwed everybody to save themselves.
- How could we defend private banking on this scale ever again?
- The big ones are Bank America and Wells Fargo.
- Both of them have both agreed to pay fines. Bank of America – 300 million. Wells Fargo 175 million.
- Here was what their fine was for. They went and charged African American and Hispanic families more interest for mortgages than they did for whites who had identical credit scores.
- Five of the biggest banks in the world Barclays, Wells Fargo, HSBC, and JP Morgan Chase have all admitted major breaches of minimal ethics, minimal morality, legality all to advantage themselves at the expense of the public.
- Private monster banks are an unsafe way for any society to manage the credit that has now become central to the economy. It is inappropriate for us to have banks that have more money than the government supposedly regulating them.
Guest – Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Torture
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Campaign To Release Russell Shoatz From Solitary Confinement Into General Population
Last year, the National Lawyers Guild called on Superintendent Louis Folino to support the Program Review Board’s recommendation to release Russell Maroon Shoatz into the general prison population at SCI Greene in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. As many listeners may know, Russell Maroon Shoatz has been held as a political prisoner under intense lockdown spending no more than one hour a day outside of his cell for the past 21 of those years. He was locked up in 1972 for his activity as a member of the Black Liberation Army. We follow up on the international campaign to release Shoatz. The effort was launched in New York City and London and sponsored by the Scientific Soul Sessions.
Theresa Shoatz:
- He goes before the Program Review Board every 90 days, its about 68 visits since he’s been in solitary confinement. He hasn’t had any infractions in 30 years.
- If you look at that, they don’t intend to release him into general population.
- It’s a check-off, how has response been around the guards? What’s your response when you’re taken to the shower?
- Russell had become disappointed with the Program Review Committee and said “I’m not going anymore.”
- I called the Program Review Committee at SCI Greene, and said we’re getting tired of this no-movement forward.
- They said they look down on that as not cooperating with the prison. We look at as they’re not cooperating with all the rules they set forth. There is a step down program, they don’t use it as much as they should.
- When you talk about holding one person in solitary confinement, he has to be transferred, whatever his movement, to the shower, to the one hour cage, it takes two guards.
- SCI Greene released at least 20 prisoners from solitary confinement who they had no intention of releasing but because the state budget is in jeopardy now.
- They left Daddy back there. Daddy’s approaching 70 years of age, he hasn’t had an infraction in 30 years, you would’ve thought he’d be the perfect person for this step down program, and we questioned that.
- When I talk to the staff in solitary confinement, they all say he needs to be general population.
- Superintendent Folino retires in 2 years and I think he may want to slide out without releasing him into population.
- Russell escaped in 1977, in the 80s, he was in population at SCI Pittsburgh.
- He had been voted the first black president of the Lifers Association.
- Folino states that he is a leader and he is to remain in solitary. The director of the Program Review Committee actually stated that he is a leader. Obviously Theresa, you don’t know he’s a leader?
- Outside of him being a leader, he’s been able to withstand this 23 hour a day lockdown.
- I do see there are some changes with Russell. I’m talking emotionally, he’s very distraught now.
- I’m shocked that he hasn’t totally broken down.
- He gets a lot of mail. He’s busy with letter writing.
- I found there have been a lot of suicides in SCI Greene’s solitary confinement unit. Boys in their twenties hanging themselves. You don’t hear about it.
- This is torture. In 2005, there were 80 thousand people in solitary confinement.
- Juan Mendez’s report on Russell Maroon Shoatz
- My focus is on getting Maroon into population. I’m concerned with stopping the expansion of prisons being built. It costs millions of dollars to build new prisons, instead of using that for education for prisoners being released.
- Put that money back into public schools instead of building new prisons.
- We’re being assaulted by this present day prison system and our government nor our state seems to mind locking up folks or taking away money from our public school education and putting it into prisons.
- Congressional Hearing on Solitary Confinement
- hrcoalition.org / Russell Maroon Shoatz
Guest – Theresa Shoatz, a Philadelphia-based prison justice activist and the daughter of Russell Shoatz.
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Glenn Greenwald: Challenging the Surveillance State, Breeding Conformists
Glenn Greenwald, author and contributor (columnist and blogger) to Salon.com. During his book tour for the release of With Liberty and Justice for Some, (paper back release) he gave a impactful speech in Chicago titled Challenging the Surveillance State.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Hydraulic Fracturing, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power, Uncategorized, War Resister
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Updates:
- Occupy Chicago Tribune Getting Sued Under World Property Intellectual Organization
- Julian Assange Applies For Political Asylum – Twitter @justleft / @wlcentral
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Austerity and Coalition Government in Greece
Last week we discussed the popularity of the Syriza Party, Greece’s skyrocketed unemployment and the huge military contracts Greece is locked into with France and Germany. In part two of our interview with Greek-American National Lawyers Guild attorney Eric Poulos we discuss the assembling of the coalition government in Greece and the economic implication.
Attorney Eric Poulos:
- New Democracy and Syriza’s the left wing coalition opposed to the bailout got the most votes. New Democracy got about 2 percent more which is the conservative center right party.
- Syriza got 27 percent. The Social Democrats did terribly and got only 14 percent.
- The fascist party the Golden Dawn unfortunately kept the same percentage. The one part that lost a lot of votes was the Communist Party.
- Almost 40 percent of the voters did not vote. I think people are just worn out.
- Everybody across the board has taken a 15 percent reduction in pay.
- New Democracy Party will be appointed Prime Minister.
- Fifty percent of the cops voted for the fascist party – Golden Dawn
- Greece is a country that was occupied by Hitler and caused untold loss and devastation.
- This coalition that ran Syriza is a coalition which is 12 or 13 different groups.
- The election is incredible in that it changed nothing, it changed everything, because the same parties will be ruling.
- The people of Greece continue to suffer, it doesn’t create one job. It doesn’t help to pay for one prescription.
- It’s not just Greece, it’s Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland too.
- I think the only hope is that they can hook up with other countries with united action to fight against the European Union policies.
- There has to be an upsurge in the fight against the fascists in Greece.
Guest – Attorney Eric Poulos, writer and National Lawyers Guild member.
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Reverend Billy and the Spectra Pipeline Protest Event
The plans to bring a 30 inch gas pipeline through the West Village of Manhattan is on the fast track with the support of Mayor Bloomberg. Spectra Pipeline is the company that will deliver the high pressure natural gas hydrofracked from the Marcellus Shale deposits. A heavily protested and contentious process itself. According to an expert radioactive waste this natural gas can contain radon 70 times above normal. Radon is a tasteless odorless gas created naturally during radioactive decay of uranium, thorium and radium. The EPA reports radon causes 21 thousand deaths from lung cancer each year. NO PIPELINE AT THE HIGHLINE – JULY 1, 2012 worship service and political rally
Reverend Billy:
- Our basic mission statement . . .stop shopping children. Our basic mission statement has remain the same over 10 years now. The project of Guiliani and Bloomberg to turn our great city into a suburb.
- It was WBAI project, Cornell West, Chris Hedges, we sang and were the house choir. The jury of those great peers found Goldman Sachs guilty of robbing from us and charged them with 87 billion dollars I believe.
- We sat down and lock arms in the old civil rights position. A nice circle of locked arms.
- Out of the 15 that got arrested, I was about the 8th to leave the fold. I think that eight of them will be the Blankfein 8. It’s a lifestyle change, if you’re really gonna go all the way with these . . . we weren’t blocking anybody. . it was symbolic.
- Those ziplock handcuffs they have, they yank on them. In the precinct house an hour later your hand is purple and I had a numb thumb for six months.
- Sometimes shopping is a chain store that buys sweat shop goods, and sometimes its our consumption of power. How do we heat? How do we use electricity?
- That of course is decisive in terms of climate change, which has increasingly become everybody’s politics.
- We’ve kept fracking out of upstate New York to some degree, but Cuomo is going to let it in to some degree.
- They want to come from the Far Rockaways with a pipe called the Constitution and they’re coming under the Hudson River and appearing into the Meat Packing district.
- It’s mysterious Cheney was able to keep the report of what those chemicals are from the American people.
- We have a 700 seat house there and we’re going to take the audience over two blocks to where the pipeline is to surface.
- I don’t think the consumer society makes prosperity.
- A lot of the communities in our country where people are watching television all day, eating sugar and fat and unable to operate, where the kids go into the pipeline of jail. . .needs the energetic compassion of change.
- We’re becoming our own third world here, we need to pay attention to our communities. Get those Wall Street companies out of our communities and ask ourselves what do we have that makes value here? Right under foot, right in my neighborhood.
- It begins with living on less money, but begins with finding value in what we do with our lives.
- You go up the counties where Cuomo is exploding their aquifers, this just makes it worse.
- Some people are going to get a 100 thousand dollar check. It reminds me of the wrong person winning the lottery.
- NO PIPELINE AT THE HIGHLINE – JULY 1, 2012 worship service and political rally
Guest – Reverend Billy, (Bill Talen) A student of the writers Charles Gaines and Kurt Vonnegut, Talen has staged experimental plays, published essays and poems in Philadelphia, New York and California. At Life On the Water, a theater in San Francisco’s Fort Mason Theater, Talen presented artists such as Spalding Gray, Mabou Mines, David Cale, B. D. Wong, Holly Hughes, William Yellow Robe, the Red Eye Collective, Reno, John Trudeau, and Danny Glover reciting the works of Langston Hughes. This experience in producing led him to the confessional monologue. After studying with the cleric Reverend Sidney Lanier, Talen invented “a new kind of American preacher.” Lanier, the cousin of Tennessee Williams and subject of the work Night of the Iguana, was familiar with the re-staging of biblical narratives
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Torture, Truth to Power
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Quebec Students Protests: Largest Act of Civil Disobedience In Canadian History
Social unrest in Montreal continues unabated with nightly protests as thousands fill the streets in what is now the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. Protests against tuition hikes and austerity are evolving into community assemblies, and also into increasingly popular pots and pans protests. These larger protests against tuition hikes and austerity turn into community assemblies and also the loud pots and pans protests. In response, police randomly searching and detaining people wearing the red square in solidarity of the movement and try to break up each emerging protest.
Gabriel Nadeau – Dubois:
- The strikes started in the beginning of February, and the debate about tuition hikes became a larger debate about privatization. It started as a student strike and is now a popular movement.
- The context in Quebec is the reason we were able to build a movement. There has been so much dissatisfaction toward the government in the last 10 years.
- Many other workers saw an opportunity to go into the street because a lot of people were very angry.
- Bill 78 is a special law. This bill has 3 major sections.
- The first section suspends the Winter semester with the objective to stop the student strikes.
- Now we’re in sort of a lock out these days. The Winter semester will start in August.
- The main objective of the bill is to break the mobilization.
- We have seen thousands of illegal protests of civil disobedience.
- Last week there were hundreds of police in the subway station, who were systematically and illegally searching the students and the citizens who were wearing the red square.
- The bad thing about too many protests is the citizens get used to seeing police brutality.
- We currently contesting the law in front of the court. We are trying to suspend the law and declare it unconstitutional.
- We are planning 2 major protests this summer one on June 22, 2012 and one on July 22.
- What we’re asking for is still very simple stop the increase of tuition fees in order to keep the universities accessible to everyone
Guest – Gabriel Nadeau – Dubois, the co- spokesperson of the Coalition off the Solidarity Trade Union Association for Student (aka CLASS), which is opposed, since the beginning of this year , with rising tuition fees in Quebec decreed by the Jean Charest government.
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Austerity and Second Round of Elections in Greece
The elections in Greece have just occurred. We talk with Greek-American National Lawyers Guild attorney Eric Poulos about the left, right and center parties in Greece. Eric explains party platforms and makes a few predictions on election outcomes.
Attorney Eric Poulos:
- Greece has got money from the European Union, not to bail out Greece, it’s a misnomer in the press, it’s to bail out the banks. It’s going to pay off debt service to banks.
- There’s no stimulus to create jobs in Greece, jobs are being lost.
- Unemployment is up 20-25 percent, among youth it’s 50 percent.
- If they can, Greeks are leaving the country, taking their money out of the banks.
- Pharmacies are not filling prescriptions, doctors are not getting reimbursed from the state.
- Political party Syriza emerged from the last election. This is run off election from one that occurred in May where there was no clear victor.
- Syriza’s a left wing party that emerged from almost obscurity. Syriza is made up of many forces. It’s a coalition.
- Looks like the right wing party might be gaining votes. Syriza wants to cancel the memorandum which triggered the loan from the EU.
- It wants a moratorium on the payment of the debt, and it has various measures to deal with corruption, it wants remove immunity.
- The memorandum imposed austerity measures which Greece has tried to fulfill, and has resulted in devastation.
- Even the mainstream parties that agreed with the memorandum say they want to renegotiate that agreement.
- Greece has huge military contracts with German and French defense contractors, which they will not let Greece out of. The far left says to cancel those contracts.
- There is an out and out fascist party that got almost 7 percent of the vote. Golden Dawn.
- There’s a huge anti-immigrant sentiment that these far right parties have tapped into.
- I think conservatives will gain. I think Syriza will gain
Guest – Attorney Eric Poulos, writer and National Lawyers Guild member.
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Cuban Five Case Update: Government Paid Media Helped Shape Public Perception
The Cuban Five were convicted 14 years ago this month on conspiracy to commit espionage at some time in the future. Recently, prominent First Amendment attorney Martin Garbus joined the case of the five. He’s concentrating his legal efforts on US government paid journalists in Miami who received hundreds and thousands of dollars of payments from the office of Cuba broadcasting. A fact unknown to the defense at the time of the trial. The reporters covered the case in an almost hysterical and prejudicial fashion.
Attorney Martin Garbus:
- We’re trying to get all the facts nailed down on the paid journalists issue.
- The motion is to get discovery of those facts and then to proceed to the hearings to reverse the convictions.
- What we’ve been trying to do for the last 15 years is trying to get these facts and we’ve failed to do it.
- What you have is a cauldron, when this is in the public debate. It’s not the just the question of the media being influenced, not just the question of the jury pool being saturated,
- its not just the question of the jurors themselves being saturated.
- We understand that the government was paying people who were on major newspapers, major media, substantial sums of money to write stories to get indictments, as well as convictions, and to influence the whole question of how you charge people.
- In a normal world, these defendants would not have been charged.
- It’s not just the question of the media effecting the jury pool, it goes long before that.
- Given the circumstances, one would expect the prosecutors to try and get the highest charges that they could.
- It’s government legal influence at every single part of the legal process.
- You had both governments trying to de-fang very bad situations.
- Instead of stopping the planes, they chose instead 18-17 months later, they chose to arrest these five people whose names they knew because it was part of the cooperation pact.
- There were many people in Miami who didn’t like the idea of the Cuban government and the American government through government representatives, trying to cut back the Miami terrorists.
- A lot of them became rogue agents and trying to ruin whatever cooperation there was.
- Its seems apparent that it was purely a political prosecution.
- There’s a reason why the government has been withholding documents.
- I don’t know of any other case where you’re going to get an accumulation of facts in a situation that’s as explosive as this, given the traditional historic politics as what was going on at that time.
- You had two judges saying this was a fire storm.
Guest – Attorney Martin Garbus, one of the country’s leading trial lawyers. He has appeared before the United States Supreme Court and the highest state and federal courts in the nation. Time Magazine has named him “legendary . . . one of the best trial lawyers in the country.” He’s also known as the most prominent First Amendment lawyer.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Lawyers You’ll Like: Attorney Nancy Hollander
In this week’s Lawyers You’ll Like series, we’re joined by attorney Nancy Hollander. Nancy has been a member and partner with Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan P.A. since the early 80s. Her practice is devoted to mostly criminal cases including those involved with national security. Ms. Hollander has also argued and won a religious freedom case in the US Supreme Court. She’s served as a consultant to the defense in a high profile terrorism case in Ireland – and she represents 2 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.
Attorney Nancy Hollander:
- I was a community organizer with JOIN, Jobs or income now.
- We organized Appalachian migrants to Chicago. I wrote a book that I co-authored with Todd Gitlin called Uptown.
- I became a photographer, I learned how to develop film in the basement of Jessie Jackson’s church. I was in Cleveland for a time and then came to New Mexico, became the Executive Director of the New Mexico Civil Liberties Union, then went to law school.
- I worked as a riveter in a football equipment factory.
- It looked like that whole began when I met with Vietnamese women in Indonesia 1964. I met with women from North and South Vietnam.
- We all met at the embassy, and I thought, that was odd meeting, and that was the beginning of my CIA file.
- I represent 2 people (in Guantanamo Prison) one is Mohamado Ould Slahi, he’s a Mauratanian citizen, he was there from almost the beginning.
- We won his habeas case, the judge ordered him almost immediately released.
- After ten years, the government said they didn’t have the preponderance of evidence to keep him.
- The government appealed, the case got remanded, and we’re essentially starting over.
- They changed what they accused him of continuously. He’s never been tried, he was tortured.
- The rule of law has become the law of changing rules.
- I got a security clearance and learned about SEPA and OFAC, the Office Of Foreign Asset Controls.
- We originally represented the Holy Land Foundation in its fight against the designated and some other civil litigation.
- They were charged and convicted of providing charity.
- The law is very fluid and lawyers have a lot of power. Our power is to make change and to create miracles in some cases. There have been something like 100 terrorism cases tried in New York alone since 9/11
Guest – Attorney Nancy Hollander has been a member of the firm Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan, P.A. since 1980 and a partner since 1983. Her practice is largely devoted to criminal cases, including those involving national security issues. She has also been counsel in numerous civil cases, forfeitures and administrative hearings, and has argued and won a case involving religious freedom in the United States Supreme Court. (see decision) Ms. Hollander also served as a consultant to the defense in a high profile terrorism case in Ireland, has assisted counsel in other international cases and represents two prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Nancy is co-author of WestGroup’s Everytrial Criminal Defense Resource Book, Wharton’s Criminal Evidence, 15th Edition, and Wharton’s Criminal Procedure, 14th Edition. She has appeared on national television programs as PBS Now, Burden of Proof, the Today Show, Oprah Winfrey, CourtTV, and the MacNeill/Lehrer News Hour.
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The Moral Challenge of ‘Kill Lists’ by Ray McGovern
The Obama Administration has conducted hundreds of drone strikes in several countries, killing civilians and a US citizen. Critics point out that as the Obama Administration assassinates its’ suspects, it also avoids the legal complications of detention. In last week’s New York Times, authors Jo Becker and Scott Shane expose the priest-like role of counter terrorist adviser John Brennan as he provides Mr. Obama with the moral justification for extrajudicial murder. The framing of John Brennan’s role of priestly adviser caught Ray McGovern’s attention. His recent article The Moral Challenge of Kill Lists, dissects the New York Times story.
Ray McGovern:
- There has been a geometric increase in the number of drone strikes against Pakistan and of course Somalia and Yemen.
- London based bureau for investigative journalism estimates that about 830 civilians including women and children may have been killed by drone attacks in Pakistan. 138 in Yemen, and 57 in Somalia. It’s incredibly naive to think that this helps in any way in the war on terrorism.
- This wonderfully insightful and dangerous New York Times article a week ago talked about the conundrum of aligning these activities with US legal and moral principles. Conundrum? That’s an impossibility.
- The Fifth Amendment prevents this sort of thing if you take the interpretation we’ve always had.
- As the New York Times article mentions 1 out of 30 assassinations that are known about just one escaped assassination and was brought before a court. It’s much easier to kill them.
- If you wanted to learn about al-Qaeda, don’t you think Osama Bin Laden could’ve told us some stuff about al-Qaeda?
- Any military aged male in the area of a “bad guy” is fair game.
- Maybe I can draw from my own experience in the CIA, I know about lists. I know that when there was a coup attempt in Indonesia in 1965, that there were lists given to the Indonesian authorities of communists. How many communists on that list? A million. How many were killed, were murdered? 500 thousand plus. How many were put in prison? The other 500 thousand.
- The drones are really accurate but the target information is notoriously inaccurate.
- I love Fordham and I hate to see the administration and the very wealthy trustees who have lots of money to give to Fordham, determine who comes in to give the commencement address.
- I think that you have to have some kind of personal involvement with innocent suffering. I think that you have to have some sense of the injustice others suffer to let your heart be touched by this direct experience.
- Obama’s fallen in with a rough crowd.
- I was attracted to getting outside of my Catholic walls. There’s a small church down in Washington DC called the Church of the Savior.
- I found out they were doing wonderful things like preventing housing from being gentrified so poor people can still live there. Healthcare, jobs, addictions, a hospice for people to sick to be on the street.
- There’s been one major change for the good in this country. That is Occupy.
- When you look for proof that Occupy has incredible potential, look no farther than what the president and the top senators thought necessary to inject into the NDAA on New Year’s Eve, which allows them to use the US Army of all things to wrap us all up without charge, without court proceedings.
Guest – Raymond L. McGovern, retired CIA officer turned political activist. McGovern was a Federal employee under seven U.S. presidents in the past 27 years. Ray’s opinion pieces have appeared in many leading newspapers here and abroad. His website writings are posted first on consortiumnews.com, and are usually carried on other websites as well. He has debated at the Oxford Forum and appeared on Charlie Rose, The Newshour, CNN, and numerous other TV & radio programs and documentaries. Ray has lectured to a wide variety of audiences here and abroad. Ray studied theology and philosophy (as well as his major, Russian) at Fordham University, from which he holds two degrees. He also holds a Certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University. A Catholic, Mr. McGovern has been worshipping for over a decade with the ecumenical Church of the Saviour and teaching at its Servant Leadership School. He was co-director of the school from 1998 to 2004. Ray came from his native New York to Washington in the early Sixties as an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then served as a CIA analyst from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. Ray’s duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief, which he briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan’s most senior national security advisers from 1981 to 1985.
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