Works In Progress - February 2006

A lot of criticism has been committed to print since it was revealed that President Bush authorized warrantless wiretaps on United States citizens. Many Senators and legal experts have taken issue with the President's explanation that the targets of these warrantless wiretaps are terror suspects speaking with persons outside the United States. These Senators and experts point out that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was established for just such a purpose, and has only denied a handful of requests in the two and a half decades of its existence. But their shock and anger is misplaced, and must be a symptom of historical amnesia. This kind of abuse happens every time we go to war.

For people familiar with history, the President's announcement that he sidestepped the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court can mean only one thing: his claim that the targets were only terror suspects is another lie.

The true targets of this spying must be the political enemies of a grasping, imperial administration. How else to explain the fact that the FBI's domestic anti-terror squads in early December rounded up "eco-terror" suspects whose crimes include no violence against persons, no murders, no manslaughter, no blackmail, no airplane hijackings? In fact, a majority of the man-hours spent by the FBI on domestic terrorism are focused on young people whose tactics over the last decade have cost industry less than 1% of the monies spent on the Iraq occupation in 2005 alone. One of those arrested, William C Rodgers, was found hanged to death in his cell just days before Christmas. Who can say what his calculus might have been, whether his knowledge of Guantanamo bay's 'Camp Delta' and the fate of fellow US Citizen Jose Padilla convinced him to end his life, rather then risk the 'Just Us' system of our country under Bush?

Meanwhile, the Department of "Defense" (which was known as the Department of War throughout the history of the United States until its imperial rise from the ashes of World War Two) has admitted that it has been spying on - surprise - domestic peace groups whose propensity for violence is nonexistent.

The CIA has to hide 12 of its former Italian operatives, whose arrest warrants in Italy for the rendition of persons from that country violated the established extradition treaty with Italy and threaten to impede ordinary law enforcement in non-terror situations. Secret US prisons and rumors of secret US prisons haunt Europe, and planes carrying secret US prisoners are spotted around the world, yet the President merely asserts that we "do not torture." So why avoid accountability?

The reasons we restrict such sweeping powers is not obscure. American history is full of examples of legitimate power extended into political and racist abuses of American citizens. John Edgar Hoover was the most powerful gay man in United States history, who obsessively collected political and personal dirt on those whose race or politics he hated for more than 5 decades, including the covert and illegal wiretapping and bugging of Martin Luther King, Jr. Hoover's death, and the theft of COINTELPRO documents from a small FBI field office in Media Pennsylvania, collapsed the house of cards that supported Hoover's terror. That collapse led directly to the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and other reform laws which the President and his henchmen now ignore.

Many have asked for the impeachment of the President, in response to his admission of felony wiretapping. I agree that we must impeach the President, but first we need a perp walk. He has admitted his guilt, so there is no question of guilt to be decided at trial, which is what an impeachment is. The President has publicly claimed powers he clearly does not have. There is no question whether anyone has the authority to issue warrantless orders for wiretaps on anyone in the United States. Even illegal aliens have the right to be secure in their persons and possessions against illegal searches and seizures -- that is why the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court existed in the first place. It was created to cover instances where known KGB agents were spying in the United States. It still required a warrant, and it still did so effectively. We must return to the rule of law, we have seen what we get under the rule of an Emperor. Arrest Bush!