OPINION
TEA PARTY CRASHES: THE MOST UNPATRIOTIC ACT h/t WMR
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TEA PARTY CRASHES: THE MOST UNPATRIOTIC ACT
By Susan Lindauer, 9/11 Whistleblower indicted on the Patriot Act
I confess that since November I’ve been holding my breath, watching the clock for how long Tea Party newcomers could hold out against the entrenched Republican elite on Capitol Hill. Collapse was inevitable, however I admit to feeling bitterly surprised at how rapidly they have thrown in the towel.
For the record, most of the Tea Party quit their principles of liberty on February 14, 2011—20 days into the new Congress—when Tea Party leaders abruptly abandoned their opposition to the Patriot Act and voted to extend intrusive domestic surveillance, wire tapping and warrantless searches of American citizens. In so doing, they exposed the fraud of their soaring campaign promises to defend the liberty of ordinary Americans, and fight government intrusions on freedom. All those wide eyed speeches that flowed with such thrilling devotions, all of it proved to be self-aggrandizing lies.
The Tea Party didn’t even put up a fight. Briefly they rejected a sneak attack to renew three surveillance clauses of the Patriot Act on a suspension vote. That filled my heart with hope. One push from the Republican elite, however and they went down with a loud thud.
My disappointment is particularly acute. Rather notoriously, I am distinguished as the second non-Arab American to face indictment on the Patriot Act, after Jose Padilla.
My status was pretty close to an enemy non-combatant. One would presume that I must have joined some terrorist conspiracy? Or engaged in some brutal act of sedition, such as stock piling weapons and munitions to overthrow those crooks in Congress?
You would be wrong. I got indicted for protesting the War in Iraq. My crime was delivering a warm-hearted letter to my second cousin White House Chief of Staff, Andy Card, which correctly outlined the consequences of War. Suspiciously, I had been one of the very few Assets covering the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations for seven years. Thus, I was personally acquainted with the truth about Pre-War Intelligence, which differs remarkably from the story invented by GOP leaders on Capitol Hill.
More dangerously still, my team gave advance warnings about the 9/11 attack and solicited Iraq’s cooperation after 9/11. In August 2001, at the urging of my CIA handler, I phoned Attorney General John Ashcroft’s private staff and the Office of Counter-Terrorism to ask for an “emergency broadcast alert” across all federal agencies, seeking any fragment of intelligence on airplane hijackings. My warning cited the World Trade Center as the identified target. Highly credible independent sources have confirmed that in August, 2001 I described the strike on the World Trade Center as “imminent,” with the potential for “mass casualties, possibly using a miniature thermonuclear device.”
Thanks to the Patriot Act, Americans have zero knowledge of those truths, though the 9/11 Community has zoomed close for years. Republican leaders invoked the Patriot Act to take me down 30 days after I approached the offices of Senator John McCain and Trent Lott, requesting to testify about Iraq’s cooperation with the 9/11 investigation and a comprehensive peace framework that would have achieved every U.S. and British objective without firing a shot. Ironically, because of the Patriot Act, my conversations with Senator Trent Lott’s staff got captured on wire taps, proving my story.
You see, contrary to rhetoric on Capitol Hill, the Patriot Act is first and foremost a weapon to bludgeon whistleblowers and political dissidents. Indeed, it has been singularly crafted for that purpose.
The American people are not nearly as frightened as they should be. Many Americans expect the Patriot Act to limit its surveillance to overseas communications. Yet while I was under indictment, Maryland State Police invoked the Patriot Act to wire tap activists tied to the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, an environmental group dedicated to wind power, solar energy and recycling. The DC Anti-War Network was targeted as a “white supremacist group.” Amnesty International and anti-death penalty activists got targeted for alleged “civil rights violations.”
All of these are American activists engaged in lawful disputes of government policy. All of them got victimized by the surveillance techniques approved by Tea Party leaders, because they pursued a policy agenda that contradicted current government policies. The Tea Party swore to defend the freedom of independent thinking in Congressional campaigns. One presumes those promises are now forgotten until the next election.
I cannot forget. I cannot forget how I was subjected to secret charges, secret evidence and secret grand jury testimony that denied my right to face my accusers or their accusations in open court, throughout five years of indictment. I cannot forget my imprisonment on a Texas military base for a year without a trial or evidentiary hearing.
I cannot forget how the FBI, the US Attorneys Office, the Bureau of Prisons and the main Justice office in Washington — independently and collectively verified my story— then falsified testimony to Chief Judge Michael Mukasey, denying our 9/11 warnings and my long-time status as a U.S. intelligence Asset, though my witnesses had aggressively confronted them. Apparently the Patriot Act allows the Justice Department to withhold corroborating evidence and testimony from the Court, if it is deemed “classified.”
I cannot forget threats of forcible drugging and indefinite detention up to 10 years, until I could be “cured” of believing what everybody wanted to deny— because it was damn inconvenient to politicians in Washington anxious to hold onto power.
Some things are unforgivable in a democracy. The Patriot Act would be right at the top of that list. Nobody who has supported that wretched law should ever be allowed to brag of defending liberty again. That goes for the Tea Party. By voting to extend surveillance of American citizens, they have abandoned the principles of freedom that brought about their rise to power. They have shown their true face.
It is a face that we, the people, will remember. I, for one, have no intention of allowing them to forget.
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Susan Lindauer is the author of EXTREME PREJUDICE: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq. http://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Prejudice-Terrifying-Story-Patriot/dp/1453642757
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From the Hill Blog –
House sends Patriot Act to Obama
By Pete Kasperowicz – 02/17/11 10:09 AM ET
The House on Thursday morning approved a three-month extension of three Patriot Act surveillance authorities, sending the bill to the White House for approval.
The White House is expected to sign the bill into law before the government’s authority to access business records, conduct roving wiretaps and monitor individual terrorists expires on Feb. 28.
This is the second House vote in four days on a Patriot Act bill.
On Monday, the House approved an extension until Dec. 8, but the Senate amended it to an extension through May 27. The House then agreed to that shorter extension.
The final 279-143 House vote was similar to the 275-144 vote on Monday. In both votes, more than 60 Democrats supported the measure, and more than two dozen Republicans opposed it.
House Intelligence Committee ranking member Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) said on Thursday that he supports a three-year extension, which the White House wants, along with many Senate Democrats.
But other Democrats on Thursday continued to oppose the bill, arguing that the GOP is pushing for an extension without any hearings to discuss what changes might be made, or what abuses might be happening under the current law. House Financial Services Committee ranking member Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said he does not oppose extension, but opposes an extension unchanged.
Others pushed generally for more oversight of the surveillance programs, and Republicans again said they would hold oversight hearings between now and the end of May.
“We’re gonna do it, we’re gonna get it done, but we need to have the extra time that was given to us by the Senate,” said Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), who chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security.
Posted at MediaMonarchy.blogspot.com
rom threat level: The House voted Monday to extend to December three expiring provisions of the Patriot Act spy legislation. The measure’s passage, by a 275-144 vote, was expected. The three provisions are expiring at month’s end. Rather than seriously debate or alter them, the House punted — the third failure by Congress in more than a year to address the law’s controversial issues. The measure now goes before the Senate, which is likely to follow the House’s course on legislation that was hastily adopted following the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. Here are the expiring provisions the House adopted:
• The “roving wiretap” provision allows the FBI to obtain wiretaps from a secret intelligence court, known as the FISA court (for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), without identifying the target or what method of communication is to be tapped.
• The “lone wolf” measure allows FISA court warrants for the electronic monitoring of a person for whatever reason — even without showing that the suspect is an agent of a foreign power or a terrorist. The government has said it has never invoked that provision, but the Obama administration said it wanted to retain the authority to do so.
• The “business records” provision allows FISA court warrants for any type of record, from banking to library to medical, without the government having to declare that the information sought is connected to a terrorism or espionage investigation.
flashback: patriot act’ extensions down, but not out
from WMR thread –
There may be a few readers who would like to know more about the courageous Susan Lindauer. This came from my blog ShermSays@blogspot.com
Susan P. Lindauer, a Smith graduate with an MA from the London School of Economics, was a journalist who claimed to be a C.I.A. asset. She developed some expertise in Middle Eastern affairs, and was arrested March 11, 2004 and held without a trial. The arrest came days after she inquired at the office of Senator Trent Lott about how she could contact the 9/11 Commission. She wanted to speak about the work she did in the Middle East for seven years.
She was accused of being an unregistered agent of the Iraqi government. Though the press translate that as’spy,”the fact is it means something akin to being an unregistered lobbyist. The difference is she faces a ten year prison sentence. She admits traveling to Baghdad but denies taking $10, 000 from the government of Saddam Hussein. She does admit taking , on instructions of the C.I.A., to pay for the trip to Baghdad. She was also ordered to stay away from the peace community.
No evidence has been presented to sustain the charge that she was attempting to influence anyone on the behalf of Iraq. She claims that she was a back channel link to the Iraqi mission to the UN since 1996, and that she was supervised by the C.I.A. and DIA.
The federal government has shown a great deal of interest in her case. This is perhaps because she opposed the invasion of Iraq and had presented her second cousin, then White House Chief of staff Andrew Card, with a letter outlining the problems that could follow an successful invasion. She predicted the outbreak of violence and sectarian warfare. The letter predicted that an invasion would spur the resurgence of Al Qaeda and promote Iran to role of dominant power in the region. Lindauer claimed to have used her connections to persuade an Iraqi official to let an F.B.I. investigator fly to Baghdad to lean if Mohammed Atta really met an Iraqi agent in eastern Europe.. She was frustrated the F.B.I. did not pursue the matter. She also briefed cousin Card repeatedly about backdoor discussions with the Iraqis over an 18 month period. Lindauer believed she had made great progress toward getting weapons inspectors back in Iraq.
She has not come to trial because the prosecution has alleged for almost four years that she is delusional and unfit for trial. The case is unusual because prosecutors are known for resisting claims that defendants are mentally unfit to assist in their own defense. She is now attempting to prove her sanity. She had a pre-trial hearing on June 17, 2008, and the competency hearing is scheduled for July 7. If her prior analysis of the Iraq situation is any indicator, she seems more sane that the administration that came down hard on her.
Her father had been a Republican candidate for governor in Alaska, and she spent time on Capitol Hill as an aid, working for Congressmen Peter De Fazio and Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrats. She also worked for Senator Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois. She claims that from 1995 on she worked for American agencies as a back-channel link to Lybia, attempting to bring resolution to the Lockerbee matter. After Libya turned over two men, she decided that the same conflict resolution techniques could avert an attack on Iraq. For the Libyan assignment she had studied Islamic mysticism.
While in a Texas federal prison, she was being injected with Haldol. She was released in September, 2006 when federal Judge Michael Mukasey ruled that the government could not forcibly inject her with an anti-psychotic drug to qualify her to stand trial. Now she wants to prove her sanity and get her case out in the open. The prosecution says she is unfit for trial. Mukasey said the drugging had been excessive and vicious, and he questioned the strength of the government’s case.
Lindauer claims to have worked with long-time C.I.A. operative Dr. Richard Fuisz. He told her that the people behind the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 were based in Syria. He claimed that the US had advanced knowledge of the bombing. Soon after that conversation, the Clinton administration obtained a gag order prohibiting him from discussing the subject. Fuisz encountered massive legal and personal problems when he testified before Congress about an American company supplying Iraq with mobile SCUD missiles. Apparently the special launch trucks were assembled in Motherwell, Scotland and shipped to Iraq. He planned to go on’sixty Minutes,” but the interviewed was scrubbed. She used a sworn deposition to provide the United Nations with what she had learned from Fuisz. Lindauer kept Fuisz informed about her dealings with the Iraqis and trip to Baghdad. Fuisz’s next-door neighbor was Secretary of State Colin Powell. She claims her reports went directly to Powell and blames him for her incarceration.
An odd thing occurred at her June 17 hearing. Dr. Park Godfrey, a computer science professor at York University in Toronto, testified that several times Susan predicted a “massive” attack on the US that would occur in the southern part of Manhattan. She said it would be like the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. She made her last prediction in August, 2001, when she said it was “imminent.” She also said that the dealing with the attack was the great concern of Dr. Fuisz, her handler. The prosecution discounted all of this as a mere “premonition.” After the hearing, she said she had contacted the Department of Justice in August with her concerns.
The nation’s leading newspaper did not report on her predictions or premonitions. It claimed she stuck out her tongue and rolled her eyes at the prosecutor, behavior she denies. Intelligence Daily led with her predictions and made no reference to rolling eyes or other nonsense.
Court appointed psychiatrists supported the claim that she was delusional, but a psychiatrist and two psychotherapists she regularly visited did not support the prosecution’s claim. She was not permitted to produce “expert” witnesses at that time, and her witnesses were introduced as “lay” witnesses. She has a distinguished “expert” witness who will appear in July. This hearing occurred because she refused to attend court ordered counseling sessions.
A close friend who was a reporter, former Congressional aid, and reputed intelligence operative testified to Susan’s sanity and provided information that supported Susan’s claims to have been involved in intelligence work. Susan said this woman had also served as her controller.
It was revealed that she had ties to a man who, according the Leslie Cockburn, “ had had played a major role in helping the Christic Institute expose Iran/Contra and was to insist that there had been an attempt to assassinate him. After Susan’s arrest, he sought to minimize his ties he had to Susan and the other woman. He told the F.B.I. he was not all that close to the women. He had told the journalist/controller that Susan was “crazy,” which could mean anything. At the very least, it could mean that attempting to derail a war that was already on the tracks and moving ahead rapidly was pointless and very injurious to one’s well being. Susan ended up in prison, just as had Ken Ford, a NSA analyst whose views also angered the neocons. Lindauer choices seem to narrow down to going to prison or being declared mentally incompetent, which would discredit anything she has to say. If she is tried, it would mean that Andrew Card and her intelligence contacts would be called as witnesses. Information Card and her intelligence contacts would be called as witnesses. Information could come out that would be embarrassing to the Bush administration.
Lindauer choices seemed to narrow down to going to prison or being declared mentally incompetent, which would discredit anything she has to say. If she is tried, it would mean that Andrew Card and her intelligence contacts would be called as witnesses. Information could come out that would be embarrassing to the Bush administration. On September 17, 2008, she was declared unfit to stand trial. She was released from custody in 2009.
Hi Helen,
Just to bring you up to date with the silver and gold story. It looks as if it will be explosive the next couple of weeks (and that’s just the start).
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/2/17_James_Turk_-_Silver_Squeeze_in_Silver_Could_Be_the_Big_One.html
venice, thanks much. I’ll check out the story at the link you provide and post it on the Daily Specials board. Miss you and hope all is well in your part of the world.
Good Morning,
I’m sure you follow jim sinclair. He has an astute mind. The second story here is perhaps the most important regarding Russia and China being net sellers of U.S. treasuries. The writing is on the wall.
http://jsmineset.com/