Iran-contra men return to power

By Duncan Campbell

Los Angeles, California, Aug. 20— The resignation of one of the first major officials to be appointed by the Bush administration has thrown fresh light on a series of other controversial choices by the president which are causing dismay among human rights activists.

John Dilulio, director of the new office of faith-based and community initiatives, quit his post last week claiming continual frustration with Washington red tape. He had also faced strong opposition from those who believed that the activities of church and state should be separate.

Now other controversial Bush appointments may come under scrutiny.

Elliott Abrams, a former assistant secretary of state under Ronald Reagan, was appointed earlier this summer by Bush to the office for democracy, human rights and international operations. In 1991, Abrams, who once described himself as a “gladiator” for President Reagan’s policies in Central America, pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors. He had illegally withheld information from the investigation into the Iran-contra affair, in which arms were sold to Iran and the proceeds illegally funneled to contra forces waging war against the legally elected left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Abrams was sentenced to two years’ probation and 100 hours of community service, but was pardoned by George Bush senior in 1992.

On one occasion during the affair, Abrams flew to London under a false name to seek a $10 million contribution to the contras from the Sultan of Brunei. When Abrams was later questioned by a Senate hearing about concealing information, Senator Tom Eagleton warned him that his lack of cooperation could lead to “slammer time.” Abrams responded: “You’ve heard my testimony,” to which Eagleton replied: “I’ve heard it and I want to puke.”

Abrams’ appointment has come on the heels of the reintroduction into politics of a number of other figures tied to the issue. They include John Negroponte, President Bush’s choice for UN ambassador, Otto Reich, his nomination for assistant secretary of state for western hemispheric affairs, and John P. Walters, his choice for anti-drugs chief.

Robert White, the former US ambassador to El Salvador who became critical of Reagan’s policies in the region and who now works at the Center for International Policy in Washington, said of Abrams’s appointment: “To qualify for public office by lying to Congress is not an example you want to trumpet.” Of Reich, he said: “He was part of that team that put into being a policy that was illegal.”

White said he believed that the appointments sent a message to Latin America that a hardline faction had taken over. “A huge number of the appointments of George Bush are people associated with his father, so it is inevitable that they will be tarnished by the Iran-Contra affair.”

Larry Burns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, said: “It’s a rather scary script. All of a sudden we have the ‘contra alumni association’ being brought back into government. It will distort US policy in a number of ways, from debt relief to giving access to right-wing causes for US funding.” He described as “jocose” the appointment of Abrams, “a man who is the apotheosis of democracy,” to a post in an office for democracy and human rights.

“Bringing all these people who are so associated with a polarized ideological crusade that committed human rights abuses threatens to rekindle that partisanship,” said Reed Brody, legal director of Human Rights Watch in New York. “What is very unfortunate is that history has revealed American complicity in serious atrocities in the 1980s and, in effect, all these nominations may serve to rewrite history and rehabilitate a very unfortunate period of our history.”

Abrams’s appointment did not need Senate approval but a major battle is expected in that arena over two other appointments which, more than seven months after Bush took office, are still to be confirmed. Negroponte is still to face Senate questioning over his role as the US ambassador in Honduras at the time of the Contra affair. He is accused of having ignored human rights atrocities so that the Honduran government would remain agreeable to having a Contra base on its territory.

By coincidence, the appointments are being made just as Nicaragua prepares for a presidential election in November. Ahead in the latest opinion polls is Daniel Ortega, the leader of the Sandinistas whom the Iran-contra effort, and the millions of dollars and lives invested in it, was designed to eradicate.

Four of a kind

Elliott Abrams Ex-assistant secretary with Ronald Reagan, backed invasion of Nicaragua and Panama. Witheld information during Iran-Contra scandal but was pardoned in 1992. A protege of Reagan’s UN envoy, Jeane Kirkpatrick.

John Negroponte Bush choice for UN ambassador. Was US envoy to Honduras from 1981-85 during illegal war on Nicaragua. Accused of misleading Congress about abuses in Honduras.

Otto Reich Bush choice for assistant secretary of state for western hemispheric affairs. Anti-Castro hardliner who led state department from 1983-86. Accused of covert propaganda campaign against Sandinistas.

John Walters Choice for drug czar. Wants jail for users and opposes medicinal use of cannabis. Son of General Vernon Walter, Richard Nixon’s deputy chief of the CIA.

Source: The Guardian (UK)

Ten arrested at UN protesting Iraq sanctions

New York, New York, Aug. 22— Ten members of Voices in the Wilderness have been arrested after bringing a symbolic meal of lentils and rice to the steps of the US Mission to the UN, inviting members of the staff and the Ambassador’s office to share the meal across from the US Mission to the UN, (45th Street and First Avenue). Members of the group are on the seventeenth day of a 40 day fast calling for an end to sanctions against Iraq.

Last week, the NYPD arrested twelve people for approaching the steps of the US Mission with their meal and their message. Charged with obstruction and criminal trespass, they face trial on September 20.

Fasters returned today to continue bringing their message to the US Mission, some of them having recently traveled to Iraq, in direct violation of US law and the 11 year embargo. Among them , Kathy Kelly, nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, states, “We are trying to encourage the member states of the UN to ‘break ranks’ with the US in its insistence on endless sanctions for Iraq. We also ask for the US to seek reconciliation with the peoples of Iraq, to stop the continued bombing and terror, and to embrace peaceful means to solve any conflict between the two nations.” Those arrested are Ceylon Mooney, Memphis, TN, Kathy Kelly, Chicago, IL, MikiLu Peters, Chicago, IL, Nate Peters, Chicago, IL, Rev. Jerry Zawada, OFM, Hammond, IN, Peter De Mott, Ithaca, NY, Athir Shayota, Harlem, NY, Ed Lewinson, New Jersey, Felton Davis, New York, NY, Cynthia Banas, Vernon, NY.

In an August 20, letter of invitation to the US Mission to the UN, the group wrote:

"We are again inviting you to partake with us in a simple meal of cooked lentils, rice, and bread, along with unpurified water, (we don’t want to drink it and neither do Iraqi people). The meal symbolizes our concern because many Iraqis have subsisted on this food for eleven years. It also represents our earnest interest in breaking bread with you.

"We’d like to discuss the perspective of Mr. Hubert Vedrine, the French Foreign Minister, who stated :

“Economic sanctions on Iraq are 'cruel, ineffective and dangerous: They are cruel because they punish exclusively Iraqi people and the weakest among them. They are ineffective because they don’t touch the regime which is not encouraged to cooperate and they are dangerous because they…
accentuate the disintegration of Iraqi society.' [An Iraqui girl, pictured above, stands over a stream of raw sewage in Basrah, Feb, 2000.]

"Several of us have seen and heard, first hand, evidence of the disintegration Mr. Vedrine deplores. We mean you no harm or inconvenience in wanting to talk with you. And of course we are easily available as we vigil outside your building each day.

Source: Voices In the Wilderness

Police rarely charged in federal probes

By Craig Whitlock and David S. Fallis

Aug. 21— Federal investigations into civil rights abuses by police officers — including dozens of probes launched in Prince George’s County in the past two years — rarely lead to prosecutions, Justice Department records show.

From 1991 to 1998, federal prosecutors weighed the results of about 17,000 investigations into whether police officers, prison guards and other law enforcement agents abused their police powers. But prosecutors filed charges against only 252 people, convicting 159, according to Justice Department records obtained by a research group affiliated with Syracuse University.

In Maryland, the FBI has conducted more than 200 civil rights investigations of law enforcement officials in the past decade.

Only two of those cases have resulted in indictments. One led to the conviction last week of a Prince George’s police officer who turned a police dog loose on a homeless man.

Some lawyers and local prosecutors criticized the FBI and Justice Department for raising false hopes among victims’ families, given how few officers are charged with depriving someone’s civil rights under “color of law.”

Federal authorities defended their prosecution rate, saying it is extremely difficult to convict problem officers.

They said that juries are generally willing to give police the benefit of the doubt and that good officers are reluctant to testify against colleagues who cross the line. At the local level, Johnson has characterized the lack of cooperation from police as a “blue wall of silence.”

Moreover, federal law requires prosecutors to prove not only that officers acted illegally, but that they did so willfully and intentionally.

“They are difficult cases,” said Albert N. Moskowitz, chief of the criminal section of the Justice Department’s civil rights division. “We have to prove that an officer acted with a bad purpose to violate someone’s constitutional rights. It’s a pretty high standard.”

The FBI is regularly asked to examine allegations of police brutality, including recent high-profile cases in Los Angeles, New Orleans, Cincinnati and New York.

But one of the busiest places for federal agents has been Prince George’s County. Since April 1999, the FBI has announced 33 criminal investigations into possible civil rights violations by Prince George’s police officers, with 11 of them opened in the past two months.

The majority involve allegations of excessive force, including shootings and beatings. Three cases focus on whether the police department’s homicide unit deprived suspects of their constitutional rights by subjecting them to lengthy interrogations that resulted in false confessions.

The Justice Department is conducting a separate examination of the county’s police department to determine whether a widespread pattern of excessive force or racial discrimination exists. That probe is a civil matter and could result in a lawsuit to force the department to change its practices.

The investigations coincide with increased scrutiny of Prince George’s police, in part for their unparalleled record of using deadly force. From 1990 to 2000, Prince George’s police shot and killed more people, per officer, than any large law enforcement agency in the nation.

Peter A. Gulotta Jr., an FBI spokesman in Baltimore, said federal agents typically send their findings to the US attorney’s office in Maryland and the Justice Department’s civil rights division. Federal prosecutors then decide whether to file charges, he said. “We don’t make any determination on that,” he said.

Prosecutors almost always drop the case, citing weak evidence or a lack of criminal intent, records show.

Many cases are declined after only a cursory review.

For instance, federal prosecutors in Maryland closed almost 60 percent of the FBI’s civil rights investigations from 1991 to 1998 after spending less than an hour reading the case files, according to the Justice Department statistics.

In the past decade, only two FBI civil rights probes of local law enforcement officers in Maryland have resulted in indictments and convictions.

Several attorneys and relatives of victims of alleged police brutality complained that FBI and Justice officials are too quick to accept the police versions of events.

In 1993, the FBI investigated the death of Archie Elliott III, a 24-year-old Forestville man who was shot to death by officers while he was sitting, handcuffed, in the front seat of a patrol car. Police said he was reaching for a gun in his pocket that he had concealed during a search.

The dead man’s mother, Dorothy C. Elliott, said she had high hopes for the federal investigation at first but grew exasperated when the FBI waited months to examine local police reports instead of conducting an independent review.

“It’s very frustrating,” she said. “Whatever the findings are by the local people, that’s what they go with.”

Approximately 2,500 investigations into alleged abuse of civil rights under color of law are referred to Justice officials each year. From 1991 to 1998, federal prosecutors sought indictments in 1.5 percent of the cases presented to them by the FBI and other agencies, according to Justice Department data obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research center affiliated with Syracuse University.

John R. Dunne, an assistant attorney general for civil rights from 1990 to 1993, said federal prosecutors pursue only “extreme cases” that are buttressed by clear and convincing evidence. He said the tiny percentage of civil rights investigations that wind up in court suggests that many law enforcement officers are getting away with breaking the law. “In my mind, there’s no question about it,” he said.

Prosecution rates are low across the nation, with almost one-third of US attorney’s offices failing to prosecute any officers for such violations from 1991 to 1998.

Source: Washington Post

FBI testimony provokes fear of new COINTELPRO

By Hank Hoffman

Is the FBI back in the business of trying to squelch political dissent? An obscure paragraph in congressional testimony this past spring by departing FBI Director Louis Freeh has fanned fears that the agency is planning a surveillance and disruption effort against anti-globalization groups similar to COINTELPRO, which focused on the anti-war and Black Power movements in the ’60s and ’70s.

Freeh delivered his testimony on the “Threat of Terrorism to the United States” before the Senate Appropriations committee on May 10. In the section on “domestic terrorism,” Freeh identified “right-wing extremist groups,” such as the World Church of the Creator and Aryan Nation, as “representing a continuing terrorism threat.” One of the two paragraphs dealing with “special-interest extremists” focused on the eco-sabotage of the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front. In contrast, extreme anti-abortion groups, with their record of murder and clinic bombings, merited only a passing mention.

But it was the final paragraph in Freeh’s assessment of “left-wing extremist groups” that raised eyebrows among anti-globalization activists: “Anarchist and extremist socialist groups — many of which, such as the Workers World Party, Reclaim the Streets and Carnival Against Capitalism — have an international presence and, at times, also represent a potential threat in the United States,” Freeh said. “For example, anarchists, operating individually and in groups, caused much of the damage during the 1999 World Trade Organization ministerial meeting in Seattle.”

“These are extremely dangerous and inappropriate comments,” says Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, co-founder of the Washington-based Partnership for Civil Justice. Verheyden-Hilliard is the lead attorney on a lawsuit against the FBI and other police agencies for civil rights violations during the April 2000 protests at the Washington meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Noting that Freeh’s remarks were made in the context of an appropriations hearing, she says that he “may be trying to legitimate funding for a government-sponsored war against the social justice movement.”

Freeh’s comments do provoke serious concerns. No justification is offered for the naming of Workers World Party, a Marxist group, and Reclaim the Streets, a network founded in London in 1995 that merges protests and raves, as representing potential threats. Freeh seemingly criminalizes all anarchists based on vandalism during the Seattle WTO protests. “By demonizing this movement and suggesting these folks pose a threat,” says Verheyden-Hilliard, “they justify declaring some form of martial law [during large demonstrations].”

Verheyden-Hilliard notes that protests in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Washington have been met with excessive police response: illegal arrests, intrusive surveillance, pepper spray and the employment of agents provocateur. Washington police traveled to Philadelphia, Quebec and Genoa to observe protests, while local and state police are cooperating with the FBI on “joint anti-terrorism task forces.” She adds: “It appears there’s been substantial funding, sending people all around the country.”

According to Jon Weiss of New York Reclaim the Streets, activists’ initial response to Freeh’s testimony was fear “because the phrase ‘domestic terrorism’ is usually just a packaging tool for the mass suspension of civil liberties.”

Weiss suspects the FBI cribbed the terrorist tag from Scotland Yard, based on actions that devolved into riots. Reclaim the Streets’ actions in Britain had been nonviolent since the network’s founding in 1995, but that changed on June 18, 1999. As part of an international “global street party” to protest the G8 meeting in Cologne, Germany, 10,000 gathered in London’s financial district. What started as a street party ended in the trashing of several businesses, including a McDonald’s and a bank.

Chuck Munson, an anarchist and coeditor of Alternative Press Review, says the feds are grasping at “broad terms to tar and feather” the movement and dismisses as “demonization” the “insinuation that all anarchists are violent.” The real violence, Munson argues, is perpetrated by the police. “They’re the ones who bring guns, bullets, gas, dogs and water cannons to protests,” he says, “and they use them.”

FBI spokesman Steven Berry would not elaborate on Freeh’s reasons for targeting anarchists, Workers World and Reclaim the Streets beyond drawing attention to Seattle. But their inclusion wasn’t random. “There are a lot of groups in the anti-globalization movement who have exhibited some potential to commit a terrorist incident,” Berry insists.

Asked whether these groups or others are under investigation or subject to counterintelligence operations, Berry says, “We don’t comment on specific investigations.” Berry denies that Freeh’s comments were a politically motivated smear. “We recognize that every group has the right to assemble, the right to meet, has the right to exist no matter how abhorrent their message is,” Berry says. “The FBI only gets involved when there is a violation of federal law.”

Says Weiss, “If blocking a road or having a party constitutes a terrorist act these days, I suppose we’re guilty. The FBI is trying to get their mind around the concept that there is a global democracy movement, and they don’t quite understand it yet.”

Source: In These Times; for subscriptions: 1-800-827-0270.

Record 6.47 million adults in corrections system

Aug. 27— The number of adults behind bars, on parole or on probation reached a record 6.47 million in the year 2000 — or one in 32 American adults, the government reported yesterday.

Jails and prisons held 30 percent of the adults in the corrections system, or 1,933,503. People on probation accounted for 59 percent of the total, or 3,839,532. An additional 725,527 adults were on parole.

Over the past two decades, the number of adults in the corrections system has tripled. They make up 3.1 percent of the country’s adult population, compared with 1 percent in 1980, said Allen J. Beck, a chief researcher with the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.

During the 1990s, the corrections population increased 49 percent. By the end of last year, there were 2.1 million more adults in the system than there were in 1990.

The rate of growth was 2 percent between 1999 and 2000, compared with an average of 4 percent during the 1990s. Beck attributed the slowing growth to the cumulative effect of a drop in crime rates that began in the 1990s.

Nearly 2.5 million people were released from parole or probation in 2000. Among parolees, half successfully completed the terms of their release in 1990. By 2000, 43 percent completed parole and stayed out through the end of the year.

Among those released from community supervision in 2000, 15 percent of probationers and 42 percent of parolees were sent back to prison or jail that year for new violations.

The report also showed that the percentage of women in the prison population, as well as their percentages among probationers and parolees, rose.

The states with the largest percentage of their adult population in the corrections system were Georgia, 6.8 percent, and Texas, 5 percent. At the other end were West Virginia, New Hampshire and North Dakota, each with 0.9 percent.

Source: Washington Post

Dept. of Interior position created for Watt protégé

Washington, DC, Aug. 24 (ENS)— Under cloak of a Congressional recess, James Cason, a former developer and protégé of James Watt, was appointed Assistant Deputy Secretary of Interior by Gale Norton on August 9.

Research by Friends of the Earth (FoE) and Earthjustice discovered that the position of Assistant Deputy Secretary has never existed under previous administrations and appears to be subverting Congressional approval of top agency officials.

“Apparently the Bush Administration has taken to creating new positions at Interior in order to ram more appointees with pro-extractive industries, anti-environmental interests down the throat of the American public,” said Kristen Sykes, FoE Interior Department watchdog. “Like Norton and Griles, James Cason has been a soldier for moneyed interests who seek to exploit public lands for personal profit.”

In 1986, Cason played a key role in the Interior Department’s decision to resume selling titles to federal oil and shale tracts for $2.50 an acre, far below their market value. He then proceeded to approve the granting of titles to some 82,000 acres, even though Congress had made clear its intent to revise the program.

One set of claims, totaling 17,000 acres, was purchased by private developers for $42,000 and sold months later for $37 million.

Cason also approved a revision of federal audit regulations that would have saved 12 major oil companies millions of dollars in unpaid or underpaid royalties.

According to press reports, Cason signed this deal on the stationary of the oil companies’ attorneys. According to the official job description obtained from the White House by FoE, Cason will have sweeping powers to act on behalf of Deputy Secretary of Interior J. Steven Griles without being subject to the scrutiny of the Senate.

In March 1989, Cason was a nominee for Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment under the first Bush Administration, but his nomination was derailed because of concerns over his anti-environmental views and allegiance to big business.

Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, remarked at the time, “I am deeply disturbed about reports that Cason has repeatedly advocated positions at the department of Interior that reduce returns to the taxpayer from federal resources and undermine sound protection of the environment.”

“We already know that this Bush administration has become a second home for bureaucrats from the previous Bush and Reagan administrations,” said Maria Weidner of Earthjustice’s White House Watch. “But now they’re filling positions with rejects from those administrations too.”

Denver activists tell Bush: “Not our president!”

Denver, Colorado, Aug. 25— On Aug. 14, President George W. Bush was met by protesters in downtown Denver, Colorado. Bush came to address a $1,000-a-plate minimum-donation fund-raiser for the state’s Republican Gov. Bill Owens.

As Bush approached the Adam’s Mark Hotel, marchers fashioned a two-by-two formation and stepped off into the streets. Over 300 protesters, including members of Jobs with Justice, Colorado Hands off Cuba Coalition, the Communication Workers union, Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace, and Rainbow Flags for Mumia, as well as a Black Bloc contingent and others, joined together for the march.

The demonstrators chanted “G.W. go home!”, “George Bush, we know you, your father was a killer, too!” and “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Bush, Cheney go away!”

Source: Workers World News Service

Charges against Niketown 7 dropped

Statement of Niketown Seven

Chicago, Illinois, Aug. 27— Charges were dropped against seven Loyola University students, who were arrested on January 27th at Niketown for civil disobedience in support of workers at the Kukdong factory in Puebla, Mexico. While trying to organize and independent union, workers at the factory went on strike and were subsequently attacked and fired. To help bring attention to this situation, the students entered the store, dropped leaflets, and hung a banner. After attempting to deliver a letter of the workers’ demands to the manager, the seven members of Loyola Students Against Sweatshops were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing.

The worker rights activists had asked for a jury trial and prepared seven months for it. During those seven months the defendants were prohibited from returning to the Niketown store in violation of their first amendment rights.

“Although we are happy to have the charges dropped, we know that Nike did this only because it was a lost battle for them either way. The thought of having seven university students found guilty for civil disobedience would have created more bad press for them and raised more awareness of the situation at the Kukdong factory,” said Tom Strunk, a fifth year Ph.D. student.

Workers at the factory are still fighting to obtain recognition of their independent union, SITEKIM. Contrary to precedence, most of the workers who were initially fired have been rehired due to the workers’ ongoing struggle and the international solidarity campaign being lead by United Students Against Sweatshops.