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July 21. 2002
Dave Marsh
Mr. Big Stuff:
Alan Lomax, Great White Fraud
James T. Phillips
"I'll
Tell You No Lies"
The Human Rubble of War
July 20, 2002
Gavin Keeney
The Grave
New Urbanism
World Trade Center Burlesque
Jacob Levich
"I
Was Schooled in Hate"
Confessions of a
Summer Camp Terror Tot
Thomas Croft
Augusta,
GA
Growing Up in the Deep South
Alexander Cockburn
The
Market Hogwallow:
Popgun Populism Isn't Enough
July 19, 2002
Abe Bonowitz / SueZann
Bosler
A Discussion
with Jeb Bush on the Death Penalty
Jonathan Power
No Need
for War Against Iraq
Rick Giombetti
Qwest
Death Watch
Kurt Nimmo
Of Mice,
Bullets & Bombs
M. Shahid Alam
Through
Racist Eyes:
Is Eurocentrism Unique?
July 18, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
Business
As Usual
Jerre Skog
I Spy: Now
Let's be Fair,
the USA Ain't East Germany
Ralph Nader
The CEO
Crimewave:
Corporate Socialism
Mahbubul Karim (Sohel)
The Rising Tensions
Between Spain and Morocco
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel
and Squawk:
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save the White House?
July 17, 2002
Philip Farruggio
The
New Role Model:
Remember Jesus, George?
Zara Gelsey
Who's
Reading Over
Your Shoulder?
Behzad Yaghmaian
9/11 and
Fotress Europe:
the Drama of the New
Moslem Diaspora
Mike Ferner
War, Incorporated
Gary Leupp
Bush, Burqas
and the Oppression of Afghan Women
July 16, 2002
Pierre Tristam
Faith--based
Capitalism in
the Ruins of the Market
Kurt Nimmo
How My
35mm Camera Almost Became a Tool of Treason
Robert Fisk
The Kashmir
Distraction
Salam al--Marayati
When
is Terrorism
Not Defined as Terrorism?
Kathleen Christison
The
Image Problem:
Anti--Palestinian Bias
from Wilson to Bush
July 15, 2002
Gavin Keeney
In One
of Safire's Ears,
Out the Other
CounterPunch Wire
Nader in
Cuba
Ralph Nader
The Secret
World of Banking
Dave Marsh
Vincible:
Michael Jackson, Racism and the Music Cartel
Rahul Mahajan
Justice
for Bhopal
Jeffrey St. Clair
Seduced
by a Legend
The Return of Jimmy T99 Nelson
July 14, 2002
Bill Christison
The
DOA (Poem)
David Vest
I'll Never
Get Out of This Band Alive
July 13, 2002
M. Junaid Alam
A Process
of Dehumanization
Gavin Keeney
Go Tell
Karl Rove!
Matt Vidal
Corporate
"Ethics" Red Herrings
Ed Whitfield
Lessons
from Independence Day
Resources:
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About 9/11
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CIA, Drugs & the
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by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
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The
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Al Gore:
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July
22, 2002
Exploiting
9/11 to Justify Abusive Regimes
Why
are the CIA & FBI Targeting Me?
by Jennifer Harbury
I am writing today because I would like all of
you to be informed about some very disturbing information I received
last week. September 11 was certainly one of the most horrifying
tragedies we have ever witnessed on our own soil, but I fear
it is being badly exploited by certain government officials in
order to justify both human rights violations abroad, including
torture, as well as extreme repression against our own citizens.
Our civil rights are eroding with a speed which I find frightening.
Given the situation, I have not been
a bit surprised to find myself a target. Not long after Sept.
11, various government officials, including many of the CIA people
exposed in Everardo's case, began to publicly insist that it
was all my fault. When asked again and again if the tragedy did
not represent the biggest failure of our intelligence system
in U.S. history, they replied that I was to blame, that CIA operatives
in the field had been afraid to aggressively seek out information
from  unsavory characters. In fact,
the 1995 reforms simply required an operative to inform his superiors
before hiring a known human rights abuser, and the CIA itself
admits that permission has never been denied. Nevertheless the
accusations were made again and again, especially on a lengthy
BBC program. I took all this with a grain of salt and figured
things would come out in the wash. They did indeed....I know
that all of you have seen the lengthy disclosures about exactly
how much the CIA and FBI did in fact know, but somehow never
acted upon. Similarly, I have not been particularly upset by
harassing phone calls or right wing articles which have appeared
in remote publications.
I was however, very taken aback by the
most recent news I received, specifically, that an FBI official
told an Amnesty International staffer that they consider me a
top suspect in the death threats and assaults against Barbara
Bocek. Barbara is the Amnesty worker who has received death threats
for a year now and who has been assaulted twice, once in Guatemala
and once in Washington state. All threats have made it very clear
that she is being targeted for her work for Guatemalan human
rights. The FBI has made it very clear that they do not believe
her at all. As in the case of Sister Diana Ortiz, there seems
to be a government effort to suggest that Barbara somehow, inexplicably,
assaulted and threatened herself, not once but twice. I am sure
most of you saw the recent New York Times article. Now, apparently,
the story has shifted a bit to suggest that I have carried out
the threats, to somehow make my own case stronger. In fact, as
a matter of law, the assaults on her, some ten years after Everardo's
abduction, has a legal relevance of zero for my own case. I have,
however, been outspoken in my support for her, which is evidently
more than enough. I get the message: Shut up about the Guatemalan
terrorists here in the US who happen to have CIA links, or else
suffer the consequences.
Barbara first began receiving threats
a year ago when she wrote an op ed piece about the Bishop Gerardi
murder trial. When she went to Guatemala with a delegation in
June 2001 she was assaulted outside her hotel room and left bound
and gagged at the bottom of a stairwell. Her abductors were telling
her she would be tortured and killed for her human rights work.
Clearly, a warning was being sent to the international human
rights community. Foreigners should not feel safe, even members
of the highest level ngo's could and would be attacked and perhaps
killed whenever the killers so desired. The Guatemalan response
was predictable. It didn't happen, or else she did it to herself
for whatever reason. The U.S. government response was a throwback
to the not so good old days. No real action was taken and slowly
but surely we began to hear insinuations that perhaps Barbara
indeed was either fabricating the threats or staged the abduction.
While this was going on, my own witness
was having grave problems as well. He is living here in the US
with his family, and began to receive very frightening death
threats against himself and his children. His friends and family
back in Guatemala too were having the same problems. Upon the
request of an Amnesty staffer , we did go to the FBI offices
to give them the details. The response was shocking. The officer
read through a few lines of the police report and asked if the
assertions were true. He then stated that no threats had been
made, only obscenities. When we pointed out the portion of the
report specifically describing the threats, he refused to accept
them, stating that the witness should have mentioned them earlier
in the interview. The witness, however, was never asked. Later,
an FBI agent approached the witness at home, stating that he
had spoken with local Guatemalans, and none had noticed any military
types or death squad members around town. This was rather laughable,
and the witness asked that he not be contacted again.
I was particularly incensed by this because
it was more of the same from the mid-1990s. In the spring of
1995 just after the disclosures by Sen. Torricelli, the FBI arrived
late at night on my doorstep in Texas to let me know that the
Guatemalans were hiring a hit man to kill me. The iron security
door of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission was torn off its
hinges and left in the street. Only the answering machine was
taken. A few months later, in January 1996 my lawyer, Jose Pertierra,
had his car firebombed at his Washington D.C. home, and the religious
community where I was living in D.C. was shot at by someone in
a pickup truck with dark glass windows. The FBI agent in charge
opened the case under potential international terrorism. We also
received a tip from a high level insider, indicating a Guatemalan
military person who fought in Vietnam, owned a car repair shop,
a luxurious home, and had unexplained income. The FBI agent was
very interested but was swiftly tran sferred off the case. None
of us ever received any further communications from the FBI,
although some truly foolish statements have come back to me through
the grapevine.
When I heard about the incipient smear
campaign about Barbara, I immediately sent in all of this information
as to the same or similar events to corroborate her story. The
Guatemalan army clearly has a modus operandi of sending or hiring
people here to terrorize human rights activists and witnesses
living in this country. And our own government has a practice
of looking the other way when the perpetrators happen to be working
with the CIA.
Things went from bad to worse. Barbara
was attacked again, this time in the United States near her place
of work. She was returning home one night and heard a grating
sound beneath her car. When she got out to investigate, a car
with its headlights off pulled up behind her and she was seized
and tied up and told not to return to Guatemala for the investigation
as planned, or she would be killed. The men spoke in Spanish.
Her eyes were taped, she was gagged, and she was locked into
her car where police found her later, semi-conscious. According
to the New York Times article which followed, the police found
her story questionable. Yet most of their questions could have
been easily answered had they spoken with Barbara. But they failed
to do so.
Barbara was also sent to the FBI to give
her story. As soon as she arrived it became clear that she was
a suspect and not the victim. Her sister had accompanied her
but was not allowed to attend the "interview". Instead,
Barbara was given a hostile interrogation of many hours, and
then told that she was probably fabricating the whole story.
What on earth her motive would be has never been elucidated.
Barbara is a quiet and mature woman who
has a PhD from Stanford which she is too shy to mention, and
who worked for several years in Guatemala. She then chose to
return to the U.S. and do public service work for Native Americans
in a remote northwestern reservation. This is clearly not a woman
seeking attention for herself. This is a modest and courageous
woman who has long dedicated herself to working for the human
rights of others with little or no recognition for herself.
Now I learn that because I have outspokenly
defended her and offered up evidence of the same and similar
events when her credibility was questioned, that I too have become
a "suspect". Evidently these statements were made some
time ago. It is clear to me that I have not only received an
insult, but also a direct threat. Silence about these matters,
or else. Since I am not too good at silence, I am considering
my legal alternatives at this time. But most importantly, I wanted
to keep all of us in the network fully informed. I have no doubt
that more is coming.
Should you wish to call anyone in Congress
in this regard, I would recommend three Members on the Judiciary
Committees who have been truly heroic on the issues of human
rights : Rep. Conyers, Rep. Frank, and Senator Leahey. If you
call them, please remember that they are our friends, and simply
call their attention to yet one more example of abuse of power
by government officials. They have long been very interested
and supportive. The Congressional Switchboard telephone number
is 202-224-3121.
Jennifer Harbury
is a human rights lawyer, who represents Leonard Peltier, among
many other clients. She the author of Bridge
of Courage: Life Stories of Guatemalan Companeros and Companeras
and Searching
for Everardo: A Story of Love, War, and the CIA in Guatemala.
Today's Features
Dave Marsh
Mr. Big
Stuff:
Alan Lomax, Great White Fraud
James T. Phillips
"I'll
Tell You No Lies"
The Human Rubble of War
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