Ex-intel Official: Bush Admin Will Restrict Liberties After Next Terror Attack

North Jersey Media/RICHARD COWEN | November 13 2005

MAPLEWOOD - The man who leaked thousands of pages of top secret documents to the media in 1971 to expose the U.S. government's handling of the Vietnam War warned Saturday that another terrorist attack could permanently damage civil liberties.

Daniel Ellsberg, the former U.S. intelligence official responsible for leaking the so-called Pentagon Papers to The New York Times and 18 other newspapers, told an audience of about 400 that the Bush administration most likely would respond to any terror attack on U.S. soil by severely restricting freedom of the press and the individual's right to speak out.

"In a time of fear, I believe that the majority of the American people will cling to authority," Ellsberg told the gathering at Columbia High School for New Jersey Peace Action's annual luncheon.

"And if there is another terror attack," Ellsberg added sarcastically, "I believe the president will get what he wants. And what he wants is a new Patriot Act, one that will make the current Patriot Act look like the Bill of Rights."

The Patriot Act, originally passed by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is up for renewal.

To combat terrorism, it gave law enforcement leeway into probing the private lives of Americans - allowing for easier wiretaps, incarceration without charges, monitoring of computer use and even checking on books borrowed from libraries. Some members of Congress expressed alarm recently that the FBI had initiated 30,000 investigations of private e-mail accounts last year.

Now the Patriot Act is up for renewal, and the Bush administration is seeking even tougher measures. Ellsberg, 74, said he worries that with the Iraq war at a stalemate, a terrorist attack on American soil was "not just possible, but highly likely." Were that to happen, Ellsberg predicted that Bush would respond by escalating the war on terror - possibly to include military action against Syria or Iran - while pushing for harsher restrictions against dissent at home.

Ellsberg said that as part of Patriot Act revisions, Bush most likely would push for an Official Secrets Act - one that would make it a crime for whistle-blowers to reveal government secrets to the public. And he added, such a ban probably would apply to journalists as well.

Ellsberg worked as an analyst for the RAND Corp. in the 1960s, which conducted a huge study of U.S. policy in Vietnam. That study, which was top secret and eventually numbered 7,000 pages, is the story of what went wrong in Vietnam. Once leaked to The Times, the document became known as the Pentagon Papers, and it told of the official lies by the Johnson and Nixon administrations that the war in Vietnam was winnable.

The Nixon administration tried to prevent publication of the Pentagon Papers, but the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the public's right to know. Ellsberg eventually stood trial for leaking official secrets, but the government eventually dropped the case.

Ellsberg said Saturday that he had grave doubts he would enjoy the same freedom today.

"I don't think the current Supreme Court would see it that way," he told the audience. He added that should an Official Secrets Act be adopted, "leaks would be a thing of the past."


Informant: Milo

Kathy wrote:

From: Ken Wiggins
Date: Thu Nov 10, 2005 11:51 am
Subject: Jack-booted thugs

The New Amerikan Gulag
By Kenneth C. Wiggins

I've been fairly sure for some time now that our country is in deep trouble. Today, I am profoundly convinced, beyond any doubt whatsoever that we are in for dire times ahead, where life "as we know it" will never be the same. Whether that comes within months or years yet to come, I have no doubts that it must and will come.

I just spent three weeks incarcerated in the new Amerikan Gulag. My crime was that I couldn't make enough money to satisfy our government's petulant expectations.

Never mind that the government "imputed" my income at four times my actual ability to earn based on my ex-wife's statements that my mother "had money." There is no question, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this was a direct "shakedown", using me to extort money from my mother. You will find the same acts in any major city, only there they call it "the mob." In the new Amerikan Gulag, it is called "Family Court", but in fact is no more respectable or responsible than any other "organized crime" syndicate. Its just "legal" by this new false process they call law.

Never mind that the government has openly refused to give me a hearing, to bring their supposed "evidence" into a court. I have filed more than forty documents in this so-called "family court", another dozen in the state appellate court and about half a dozen in the state supreme court. The one consistent factor is that they accept my documents, enter them into the record, and then openly ignore them. The appellate court offers profound excuses, which within their own rules are fraudulent, and when confronted with those facts, they use more rules to conveniently "administratively dismiss" without fact or law. I call it "law by ignorance". Its just "legal" by this new false process they call law.

Never mind that the court clerk for the state supreme court refuses to even file my documents, claiming they are "not appropriate" for that high court or some other such equally lame claim. Apparently, court clerks are now the "high authority" on adjudication in these courts. It is quite clear that the court is using its clerk to avoid hearing cases it doesn't like. Its just "legal" by this new false process they call law.

Never mind that numerous people, including several lawyers, have told me that even a felony complaint for failure to pay child support is still a "civil matter", not criminal. Thus they cannot have authority to kick in your door, your castle inviolate. Tell that to my dog, whom they Maced, and my girlfriend who had jack-booted thugs pointing guns at her. Never mind that the actual "search warrant" they executed states as its sloe "probable cause" that a cop was window peaking at our home at 9:30 at night to "observe the probable suspect" through curtained windows. No reason is given as to why he was window peeking at this house, so we might assume he was peeking in windows all over town before he got here. Apparently, window peeking is now an important job skill in the new Amerikan Gulag. Its just "legal" by this new false process they call law.

Never mind that the judge, at my arraignment, waving my six inch thick file and slamming in on his desk, made it clear that the only thing he would hear was evidence that I had paid their extortion – any thing else was a waste of my time. Then he doubled my bail to an amount more than my current "arrearage", and more than any amount yet due. There is no small irony that five years ago, he was the "family court" judge, and it was his fraud at law that put me in this boat, but of course he is now the District Court judge, and of course, he sees no conflict of interest in that. Its just "legal" by this new false process they call law.

This isn't about the woes of "my" case. Nor is it about the woes of Beatty Chadwick, incarcerated for ten years on "civil contempt", without any hearing or fact, solely because he cannot prove "what is not". Never mind that "they" have made no effort to prove "what is." Nor is it about the young men I met in jail. One such, in his twenties, was convicted of some petty crime, for which he could have gotten a maximum of ninety days in jail. Instead he did thirty days, plus six months probation. For the past three years they have "violated" his probation six times, and he has spent nearly nine months in jail, with two more to go, and still faces another two years of their "probation." Its all about what is now "just legal" by this new false process they call law.

We face a serious epidemic of this "justice", of "law by ignorance", of a false process they euphemistically call "law." Once they enter your name in their system, they own you. No longer does law serve the people, it is the people that serve their monied system, which they serve up to you by this new false process they call law.

It is no longer about the "denial of due process", that sacrosanct constitutional right that we used to own. It is about being processed by government agents that make up their own law as they go and define their process by their own convenience. It is no longer about the deprivation of our civil rights, our inalienable inheritance. It is about the destitution of a government gone awry on its own power trip.

The Constitution of the United States is gone. It no longer exists, of the people, by the people and for the people. In its place is "government", for which these peoples now exist to serve.

It was not my "rights" that were violated, but the very foundations of our free society, of "civility", … that night, when the jack-booted thugs kicked in my door and pointed their guns at my chest.


Wiley - Webmaster for:
http://www.amatterofjustice.org
http://www.parentsforchildren.net


Informant: Gomez