"Shut Down Guantánamo" Rally in Boston Grabs Attention

Brian Corr of the ACLU of Massachusetts sent in dispatches from the Close Guantánamo event in Boston.

Noon: We're about to leave the ACLU of Massachusetts office for our Shut Down Guantánamo action. We've got quite a crew assembled at out office! The fact that the Boston Herald ran an op-ed from our director Carol Rose today — that has helped get the word out!

12:30 p.m.: I'm in downtown Boston, Mass. The rare January thunderstorm has stopped and the sun might just peek through the clouds and winter fog.

Despite the weather, we have a great turnout for our Shut Down Guantánamo march. We teamed up with Amnesty International for a solemn procession and protest vigil in downtown Boston demanding the closure of Guantánamo prison.

12:50 p.m.: With orange jumpsuits and black coffins outside Sen. Kennedy's office we're attracting stares, some questions, and some people joining us! It's great to see that people from all parts of the political spectrum have come out in support of the the rule of law and the Constitution.

1 p.m.: Great speeches from Nancy Murray of the ACLU of Mass. and Josh Rubenstein of Amnesty rallied the crowd a minute ago, and now the Raging Grannies are singing "Rummy Says."


This is really something for the middle of January in New England...

US Supreme Court Considers Guantánamo

As the Boston Globe reported yesterday, the US Supreme Court is looking into whether the alleged terrorism suspects that have been held for years without charge or trial at the Guantánamo Bay prison have constitutional grounds to challenge their imprisonment. The ACLU was there to monitor the proceedings.

On Monday, the Globe also published a moving piece by Sabin Willett, a partner Bingham McCutcheon, which represents prisoners at Guantánamo, called 'I Will Never Leave Guantanamo.'

Rendition: See the Movie, End the Practice

Michael Mukasey, our new Attorney General-in-waiting, just told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he doesn't know what waterboarding is. He also doesn't seem clear about what constitutes torture.

Someone should give him a ticket to see the new movie Rendition. The film has its dramatic flaws. But it also forces viewers to confront some critical and unsavory facts about how the US is fighting the "war on terror."

This is what it is like to have someone you love simply disappear at the whim of the US government. This is what waterboarding looks like. This is what it looks like to torture someone with electricity. Just imagine what that feels like. Wouldn't you say anything at all to make it stop?

It is my hope that the movie will awaken audiences to the crucial importance of the rule of law. Our standing in the world and our traction in the "war on terror" have been gravely undermined by the immoral, illegal and counterproductive practice of kidnapping victims and torturing them in CIA "dark sites" or outsourcing their torture to other countries.

The 9/11 Commission had it right when it said it was in our national interest to "offer an example of moral leadership in the world, commit to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors."

What is the law we should abide by – not simply abandon when the executive branch and its legal advisors see fit?

For a start, there is the Constitution, whose "checks and balances" are threatened by the secrecy and lack of any kind of accountability surrounding "extraordinary rendition." Then there is the Convention Against Torture, which the US ratified in 1994.

Four years later, in the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act, Congress declared that it cannot be the policy of the US to "expel, extradite and otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States."

Tell that to the scores of innocent victims who have been kidnapped and "disappeared" into torture cells on flimsy evidence or no evidence at all. Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, had Massachusetts friends, neighbors and colleagues when he lived in Framingham from 1999-2001 and worked at MathWorks in Natick.

In 2002, he was taken from JFK Airport in New York by US operatives and soon found himself in an underground dungeon in Syria, where he was tortured into making false confessions. After a year he was released and a thorough investigation by the Canadian government exonerated him of any connection with terrorism. The Canadians gave him an official apology and more than $10 million in compensation.

What did the US government do? It insisted that the case he brought to clear his name be thrown out of federal court on "state secrets" grounds. And it refused to take him off its "no fly list."

It took until October 18th for Arar to hear any kind of regret from US lawmakers. On that day, he was beamed into a Capitol Hill hearing by videoconference to tell his story and Rep. Bill Delahunt and a few other Members of Congress gave him their heartfelt personal apologies.

The Canadian media was all over the story. If it was reported in the US media, I missed it.

As the years have gone by, we have learned that Arar is one of scores of innocent victims of our "extraordinary rendition" policy. People have been seized from the streets, bound, blindfolded, and rendered on "torture flights" for knowing one of the wrong people or being from the wrong country.

We would do well to heed the words of Khaled El-Masri. This German car salesman and father of six was kidnapped and tortured in a case of mistaken identity. After his lawsuit against the US government was also thrown out on "state secret" grounds, he said:

"This is not democracy. In my opinion, this is how you establish a dictatorial regime. Freedom and justice are disrespected, as are basic morals and values. And if you don't keep quiet after you are abused, you are considered a threat to international or national security."

Extraordinary rendition puts more than our basic values and morals at risk. It also threatens national security.

To see how, you need look no further than the case of another rendition victim, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi. Under torture he gave what former Secretary of State Rumsfeld called "bulletproof" evidence of a connection between al Qaeda and Iraq, even as the Department of Defense's own intelligence agency was concluding that he was giving unreliable information.

From the rendition of al-Libi, it was a short road to the disastrous invasion of Iraq and Abu Ghraib. Regrettably, the road from Abu Ghraib has not seen us returning to the rule of law, and to those values we say our nation stands for. Instead, our use of torture, our secret prisons, and Guantanamo have all continued to offer propaganda victories to Al Qaeda.

The result? Eighty-four percent of the nation's top foreign-policy, intelligence and national security experts across the political spectrum contend that the US is losing the "war on terror," according to Foreign Policy magazine's recent Terrorism Index. More than 90 percent said the world is growing more dangerous for Americans. And a Pew global survey shows in key "war on terror" countries – Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and Turkey – our nation's approval rating ranges from 21 percent to 9 percent.

A key aim of terrorists is to deprive its opponents of legitimacy. There is no doubt that policies like "extraordinary rendition" help their recruitment efforts. We can only get back lost ground by returning to the rule of law.

As a move in the right direction, Congress should immediately pass Rep. Edward Markey's "Torture Outsourcing Prevention Act." And then it should make sure it is enforced.

It is time for Americans to stand up against a deplorable practice that is so at odds with our stated principles, and is making us less safe, not more.

Nancy Murray
Director of Education
ACLU of Massachusetts

Press Release: ACLU Constitution Day Tonight Features National Speakers, Release of Congressional Civil Liberties Scorecard

BOSTON - Today, the ACLU presents its Constitution Day program, "Standing Up To The PATRIOT Act, Rolling Back Real ID: How Can We Reclaim Our Civil Liberties?" The event will take place in the Rabb Lecture Hall of the Boston Public Library, Copley Square, from 6 to 8 p.m.

The event features three nationally known speakers:

* Barbara Bailey, Director of the Wellesley-Turner Memorial Library in Connecticut, who is one of only four people in the country who can talk about being served with a National Security Letter -- out of more than 200,000 who have been permanently gagged after getting a National Security Letter from the FBI;

* Mike German, a former Special Agent with the FBI, who infiltrated domestic right-wing terror groups and later blew the whistle on the FBI's counter-terrorism operations;

* Tim Sparapani, national ACLU Legislative Counsel, who focuses on protecting privacy and opposing abuses of government power.

In addition, the event will feature a preview clip from a not-yet-released Robert Greenwald Executive Productions film on Government Spying.

The ACLU is also releasing a Congressional Scorecard, a detailed look at how members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation have voted on 11 key "Abuse of Power" issues in the Senate and 10 in the House. The Scorecard includes a lifetime score from the ACLU on civil liberties issues, and highlights the bills that members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation have been leaders on, by sponsoring or co-sponsoring important legislation.

The Scorecard includes a lifetime score from the ACLU on civil liberties issues, and highlights the legislation that members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation have been leaders on, as sponsors or co-sponsors.

Constitution Day celebrates the rights established by the U.S. Constitution, adopted on September 17, 1787.

Before we reach the point of no return

That hollow feeling in the pit of the stomach is back—that feeling of sliding out of control down a slippery slope. I get it every month or two when I compile our civil liberties updates.

I started putting the updates together early in 2002. I assumed that this would be an exercise of a year or two, and that they would get shorter as time went by and fears of terrorism subsided.

The opposite has happened. The updates have got longer with the passing years, as 9/11 has loomed ever larger in our national consciousness. Taken together, they present an unsettling picture of how, month by month, our democracy is being transformed into a national security surveillance state in which secrecy trumps accountability. Our economy too is coming to depend more and more on the new "gold rush, a national security bubble," as Patrick Radden Keefe put it in his piece about the "huge espionage-industrial complex" in the June 25 New York Times.

At home, too few of us seem to be paying attention these developments. Many seem to believe that everything the government is doing is aimed at "them"—the terrorists—to keep "us" safe.

They may have too many other things to worry about to be concerned about certain issues highlighted in this and previous updates—the fact that that an executive power grab is ongoing, that the FBI has repeatedly violated the law in national security investigations, and that the National Security Agency is still engaged in illegal actions.

They may not yet be aware of how their lives can be affected by the huge databases that the government is creating, and by such new terror-fighting tools as the Automated Targeting System which automatically assigns a terrorist risk assessment to everyone who leaves or enters the country, US citizen as well as non citizen. These assessments are due to be kept on file for at least 40 years—but we won't be able to see them. If false information culled from a data base somewhere led to a faulty assessment, there is nothing we can do about it.

We may not be able to see clearly how our country is changing, but the outside world can. Guantanamo, torture, rendition, secret US prisons on European soil and elsewhere, and the total impunity with which the US is conducting its so-called "war on terror" are taking a heavy toll.

In this update there are summaries of two polls examining international attitudes towards the US. A Pew global survey shows that among our leading allies, the percentage of people who approve of the US ranges from 51 percent in Britain, 39 percent in France, 34 percent in Spain, and 30 percent in Germany. In key "war on terror" countries—Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and Turkey—it plunges to between 21 percent and 9 percent.

Then there are the results of the survey that the Harris Research poll conducted for the Financial Times. It shows that 32 percent of respondents in five European countries—that's one out of three—regard the US as the biggest threat to global stability in the whole world.

This update does have some good news, as some judges and some Members of Congress strive to restore checks and balances. On June 11, a three-judge panel of the very conservative Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the president cannot declare civilians resident in the US to be "enemy combatants" who can be held in indefinite detention with no recognition of their constitutional rights.

In the Senate Judiciary Committee three Republicans joined Democrats to send subpoenas to the White House, and Committee chair Patrick Leahy has said he might cite the Administration for criminal contempt of Congress.

We must stiffen the spines of our Congressional representatives for the battles ahead. And before we reach the point of no return, we must figure out how we can get ourselves off the slippery slope and back onto the Constitutional track.

Nancy Murray
Director of Education
ACLU of Massachusetts

To read the latest update:
http://www.aclum.org/update/archives/2007.07.12.pdf

For previous updates:
http://www.aclum.org/update/index.html

News: No gay exception for ACLU

Chuck Colbert, a reporter with the LGBT paper In Newsweekly, interviewed Anthony Romero, the national ACLU's executive director, during his visit to Boston in June. His article based on the interview appears here. It highlights the ACLU's work on LGBT issues as well as civil liberties challenges post-9/11.

Sweating for the Rule of Law on the "Freedom Trail"

By the time the Day of Action had dawned, the ACLU of Massachusetts conference room was full of props, and I was getting worried.

Would we really have enough people to wear the two dozen orange jump suits and gags at lunchtime when the temperature was supposed to reach the mid 90s? Would they really show up?

Would the media show up? If they did, would they find us in disarray? Would we have enough time to get everyone suited up and coordinate the carrying of coffins for Habeas Corpus and the Rule of Law, and "Torture Air," the rendition airplane?

What about all the other paraphernalia – the cell bars over mirrors that accompanied signs bearing the words of Martin Niemoller's poem about no one being left to speak for me? Were we too ambitious for a procession in the middle of the working day?

By noon, as the orange jump suits, gags and black hoods found their wearers, I began to grasp just how outraged people were by torture, Guantanamo and our government's abuse of power. Some had taken off work to be there. Others had traveled large distances. The heat was the last thing on their minds. They wanted to take these issues to the streets of Boston, home of the "Freedom Trail."

And so we set out, more than 60 strong, walking slowly to the beat of a drum. We were led by two men in black robes and a Bush mask who carried an orange jumpsuit stretched on a frame that bore the sign: "We have them in your size too."

Our intention was to pause at certain "stations of the Constitution," to remember the freedoms that were fought for at those sites. Pedestrians would be able to read the Niemoller poem and see their own faces in the mirrors beyond the bars.

The first "station" was the spot where Massachusetts delegates had signed the US Constitution in February 1788. It is commemorated by a plaque on the side of a giant Bank of America building. No sooner did we approach on the sidewalk when a Wackenhut guard barked out that we were on private property and should leave immediately. Through the megaphone I told him that we, and the members of the media who were with us, were interested to hear that the public was no longer able to pay its respects to the cradle of the Constitution in Massachusetts. He huddled with his fellow guards to decide what to do next.

We soon moved on, through the lunch hour foot traffic. Many people clapped. Some cheered. No one jeered. It seemed bystanders were happy to see us. Several came up and told us so.

Our next "station" was across the street from the Old South Meeting House, where the Sons of Liberty used to meet and the Boston Tea Party was organized. These streets had seen their share of symbolic protests over the years.

We moved on, to the front of the Old State House where the Declaration of Independence was first read to citizens of the Commonwealth, and then up the street to the seat of federal power.

Outside the JFK Federal Building we had speeches and spirited chants. One group went upstairs to Senator Kerry's office, while the rest of us chanted our way back to the ACLU office.

We had just finished changing clothes and rehydrating, when we were joined by those who had met with Kerry's staff. They said they were told he had just signed onto the Restoring the Constitution Act and the act to shut down Guantanamo.

If this is true – his support is not yet reflected on a Congressional website - it means that Representatives Delahunt and Lynch are the only Massachusetts Members of Congress who have not become co-sponsors of the Restoring the Constitution Act. This critically important legislation restores habeas corpus and fixes the worst aspects of the unconstitutional Military Commissions Act.

Where do we go from here? We have no illusions that one procession to mark the June 26 Day of Action will by itself turn things around. But on June 26 in Washington and around the country people are showing their dedication to the fundamental freedoms that were largely nurtured on the streets of Boston. We have right on our side, a pile of jumpsuits and props at the ready for future actions, and we will prevail.

Nancy Murray
Director of Education

Guantanamo: "Deeply flawed"

The Boston Globe reports today on charges from an army reserve officer that the process for determining whether a detainee should be held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison camp is "deeply flawed." It's the first time that someone on the inside of Guantanamo has spoken out.

Criticism of Guantanamo from the outside, including from the US Supreme Court, has been abundant. Hundreds of supposed "enemy combatants" have been held there for years without trial.