[The article below is by Tom Maertens, who was Director for
Nonproliferation at the NSC from 2000 to 2001, and Deputy Coordinator
for Counterterrorism at the State Department from 2001 to 2002. In
the latter position he helped develop the response to the 9/11
attacks; see the biography appended to the article below.
In the article Maertens is highly critical of the response to the
attacks, particularly with regard to civil liberties. He compares the
FBI's use of National Security Letters to secret police tactics. He
also openly discusses the possible use of government assassination
squads in America -- as suggested by a Justice Department official.
The full article is below, and it is well worth reading. I do want to
make one point, though, regarding government assassination squads. In
South and Central America these were (and still are) known as death
squads. The US has a long history of turning a blind eye to such
activities, as well as a history of planning, organizing, and funding
such actions covertly. The current Intelligence Czar, for example, is
known for claiming not to have known that such activities were
occurring in Honduras while he was the ambassador there.
Eternal vigilance demands that we take even the *possibility* of such
activities here seriously. But, what would North American death
squads look like? While we need to be vigilant about South and
Central American style death squads here, the North American death
squads would look different -- at least at first. North American
death squads would operate deniably, in secret (and government secrecy
has truly gotten out of control in the US these days). North American
death squads would look like modern, high-tech versions of COINTELPRO,
MKULTRA, and MHCHAOS.
There is some truly amazing technology available today. While it can
be used in positive ways, it can also be used to impose an
unprecedented, total police state (as Sen. Frank Church warned us, way
back in the 70s). The so-called nonlethal weapons are one such
technology that can be turned into a technology of political control.
Just as with MKULTRA, this technology has already been tested on
nonconsensual citizens and applied extrajudicially. The government
has not admitted this, but then again, they told us that the NSA would
never, ever spy on Americans... It is true. There are credible
citizens all across the US (and in other nations too) who describe
harassment which is *exactly* how such covert programs of harassment
and experimentation would appear with modern technology.
In South and Central America the death squads dispose of bodies by
throwing them out of airplanes into the ocean, or leaving them lying
around on the streets. That will not do in North America, since it
would raise questions. In North America the psychiatric system is
used to dispose of the bodies. Even though the victims of modern,
covert, high-tech assault are usually not physically killed (unless
they are driven to suicide), by any objective measure their lives are
completely destroyed. This has a disrupting and discrediting effect,
as well as sending a warning to others (just as if dead bodies were
left by the roadside). It also allows for denials, deniability, and
impunity under which these human rights abuses can continue for
decades.]
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Has Our Aim Been True?
So much has gone wrong since jets hit the Twin Towers.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0911-32.htm
by Tom Maertens
Published on Monday, September 11, 2006
Minneapolis Star Tribune (Minnesota)
Five years after 9/11, it's clear that the Bush administration's
costly War on Terror has failed on two counts. It has undermined our
civil liberties and made the world more dangerous. The direct cost of
the war in Iraq, according to Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel economist, has
already exceeded $1 trillion, including long-term veterans' care and
similar costs. Along with the war has come enormous destruction and
loss of life, and major damage to our international standing. And
there are more terrorists in the world than ever before, a fact the
administration plays up to curtail our freedoms. In the aftermath of
9/11, the administration succeeded in passing an extreme version of an
internal security law, called the USA Patriot Act. It permits secret
arrests, sneak and peek searches, and obtaining bank, credit, library
and Internet records, all without a warrant. The administration also
instituted wiretaps and intercepts on millions of Americans' e-mail
messages and phone calls without warrants, a program recently ruled
unconstitutional by a federal court.
In 2005, Bush quietly created the National Clandestine Service, which
authorizes the CIA to operate within the United States -- despite past
abuses such as Operation Chaos -- and reinstituted domestic spying by
the military through the Counter Intelligence Field Activity (CIFA),
in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. He also created the National
Security Service, putting elements of the FBI under his direct
control, the closest we have had to a secret police agency in our
200-year history. The FBI now sends out 30,000 National Security
Letters per year, demanding personal information without benefit of a
warrant. It has imposed gag orders on every aspect of NSLs, making it
illegal to reveal that one has been received. How does this differ
from secret police tactics?
Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union show that the
government conducted surveillance on as many as 150 peaceful protest
or social groups, including Greenpeace, Catholic Workers, and Quakers
in Florida.
The Bush administration has used the threat of terrorism to silence
peaceful protest at public events. It has happened all over the
country, including to two women in Cedar Rapids who were handcuffed,
led off to jail and strip-searched for "disrupting" a Bush
rally. Terrorists, perhaps? One was wearing a Kerry/Edwards button;
the other carried a small antiwar sign.
Perhaps no event demonstrates more clearly the dangerous
authoritarianism of the Bush crowd than the arrest of two American
citizens, Jose Padilla and Yasir Hamdi, who were held for 3½ years in
solitary confinement with no charges, no court appearance and no
lawyer. The Bush administration declared them "enemy combatants" --
Enemies of the State -- and threw them in prison indefinitely, just
like a Third World dictator****p.
Winston Churchill once said: "The power of the executive to cast a man
into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and
particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest
degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government
whether Nazi or Communist."
How far can the Bush administration go? Steven Bradbury of the Justice
Department recently suggested before a congressional committee that
the president might have the power to order the killing of terrorist
suspects inside the United States.
Government assassination squads? In America?
Things could get much worse. The Bush administration has bungled the
war on terror so badly there are no real prospects of "winning." Even
worse, the neoconservatives are pu****ng for a wider war in the Middle
East.
For more than a decade, they have advocated attacking Iraq, Iran,
Syria, Lebanon and even Saudi Arabia, using various smokescreens but,
overwhelmingly, to defend Israel. The principal reason they wanted to
invade Iraq was to eliminate any clandestine
weapons-of-mass-destruction program that could have threatened Israel.
The neocons' next target is Iran. The pretext is Iran's alleged
nuclear weapons program, for which there is no more evidence than
there was for Saddam Hussein's nukes. But Tehran, of course, backs
Israel's nemesis, Hezbollah.
You'd think the neocons would have learned something from the
disastrous invasion of Iraq, an occupation that has already lasted
longer than the U.S. fight against Germany in World War II. In the
single-minded world of the neocons, however, attacking Iran is an
"op****tunity" to remake the Middle East. There is apparently no end of
such op****tunities: They also encouraged Israel to attack Syria during
its incursion into Lebanon.
Everybody in government knows that the terrorists hate us because of
our blind sup****t for Israel, not because they "hate our freedom." The
Bush administration has abandoned any pretense of even-handedness, the
honest broker role we used to have, and now blindly backs every action
Israel undertakes -- whether bombing a power plant in Gaza or
civilians in Lebanon -- no matter how damaging to our own interests.
The neocons are constantly pressing the government to ally the United
States with Israel against much of the Islamic world (and its oil) in
a "battle for civilization." Such a wider war would further inflame
the Middle East and provoke an even greater terrorist threat in
response, with higher costs than we can now imagine -- including
domestic costs.
James Madison once warned: "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this
land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." The Bush
administration has already exploited the war in Iraq and fears about
terrorism to stampede the American people into accepting an
astoni****ng curtailment of their freedoms and growing lawlessness by
the government. If the administration chooses to engage in the
neocons' endless, global War for Civilization, American democracy will
ultimately be one of the casualties.
Tom Maertens served as National Security Council director for
proliferation and homeland defense in the George W. Bush White House,
and as deputy coordinator for counterterrorism in the State Department
on 9/11.
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http://www.tommaertens.com/biography/index.html
Tom Maertens
Biography
I spent most of the last 35 years traveling the globe as a
U.S. diplomat, a Peace Corps volunteer, and as a naval officer. My
final government position was as a senior official in the office of
counter terrorism in the U.S. State Department during and after the
attack of September 11, 2001. In that position, I helped organize the
U.S. response to that attack, which came to be known as the War on
Terrorism. In addition, I served as NSC Director for Nonproliferation
under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, dealing with weapons of
mass destruction. With this experience as background, I have written a
number of articles on terrorism and on the war in Iraq, which are
collected here. Included on this web site are other articles that I
consider interesting or valuable along with some book
recommendations. You may contact me with any comments you have by
using the link at the top of the page.
* Born in Minnesota and raised in Mankato, Minnesota
* Naval Officer aboard a guided missile cruiser from 1966 to 1969
* Peace Corps volunteer to Ethiopia where he taught English as a
second language and worked with the World Health Organization to
eliminate smallpox from 1971 to 1972
* Foreign Service assignment in Ethiopia as a political re****ting
officer during the revolution
* Subsequently served in Bogota, Columbia, re****ting on internal
politics, the insurgent groups and the drug connection
* Worked on Soviet affairs dealing with arms control negotiations,
economics, science and intelligence on different occasions
* Served as Deputy Principal Officer in Leningrad, USSR, from 1987 to
1989 where he re****ted on the independence movements in the Baltics
and the impending breakup of the Soviet Union
* Staff member of Senate Foreign Relations committee and staff member
and legislation author for Senator Bill Cohen
* Senior Political Advisor at the U.S. Embassy in Panama from 1990 to
1991; provided advice during December 1990 coup attempt to the
Panamanian president; Recommended that Wa****ngton bring in US troops,
which led to the collapse of the coup
* Senior Political-Military Advisor, US Arms Control Delegation,
Vienna, from 1991 to 1995 where he directed staff in conducting arms
control negotiations with Russia and other countries
* Deputy Director, Arms Transfer and Ex****t Control Policy from
1995-1998 during which he developed and led international
nonproliferation seminars to 12 countries in Asia and Europe, also
coordinated transfers of high-technology goods (satellites, computers)
* Directed the Environment, Science and Technology section, Moscow
from 1998 to 2000 where he organized and coordinated embassy
preparations for Y2K. Had oversight responsibility for a $350 million
nuclear security program; was responsible for biological and chemical
weapons issues and visited several Russian bio facilities
* Director for Nonproliferation on the U.S. National Security Council
from 2000 to 2001 where he chaired White House review of U.S./Russian
Nonproliferation Programs, resulting in $2 billion reduction in costs,
coordinated U.S. efforts to safeguard nuclear weapons and materials,
and participated in policy formulation on biological weapons
* U.S. Department of State Deputy Coordinator for Counterterrorism
from 2001-2002 where he helped develop policy response to attacks of
September 11, including planning the War on Terrorism
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