A Tale of Two Teens

If the security apparatus of the United States assists a client state in disappearing and detaining an American citizen, torturing him, and keeping him imprisoned so the FBI can aggressively interrogate him - how long does it take NPR to report on this assault on the rights of a citizen?

The horse hasn't even left the gate on that one. The story of Gulet Mohamed's detention and alleged torture was broken by the NYT on January 5, 2011, and as of the evening of January 18, 2011, NPR has yet to give ANY airtime to the case. As of tomorrow we'll be at two weeks and counting...

However, if you are an American citizen arrested on the evening of November 26, 2010 for planning to bomb a public event in Portland, Oregon, how long will it take NPR to jump on the case? The answer is four days (that does not include the immediate on-air hourly news-updates which NPR doesn't archive for searches). On November 30, 2010 there will be a full story on the case itself, and additional report featuring confrontational questioning of the mayor of Portland challenging the wisdom of his city's not fully joining a federal security "anti-terror" organization.

The complete lack of coverage of Gulet Mohamed's ordeal is no accident. It has been written about extensively since January 6, 2011 by Glenn Greenwald - and a "big follower" of Greenwald's writing is none other than NPR's go-to "Counterterrorism Correspondent," Dina Temple-Raston. Here is what Temple-Raston said to Greenwald on Nov. 5th at the NYU Constitution and National Security Conference [beginning and ending time is indicated]:

(53:16) "Hi there, I'm Dina Temple-Raston with National Public Radio, and I'm a big follower of yours Glenn and I like your stuff very much, but I'm sorry I'm going to have to correct you on a number of very basic points that clearly, uh, our representative from the FBI feels uncomfortable correcting you on..." (53:32)

The stark nature of attention and promptness NPR devotes to stories promoting the enhancement of state encroachment on individual liberties versus its complete lack of interest in reporting on the crimes of the US security apparatus is telling in this case. Both central figures in these events are about the same age, are American citizens, and were born in Somalia - and when it involves Somalia and the US "war on terror," Dina Temple-Raston is usually all over it.

On NPR Supermax is Super Funny

Considering whether Guantanamo detainees might end up in the Florence, Colorado Supermax prison, NPR put Melissa Block on the phone with Bob Wood. According to Block "He's publisher of the Florence Citizen; his newspaper was active in helping bring Supermax to Florence and he says the prison is good for the local economy." Essentially, Wood tells block that bringing Guantanamo prisoners to the Supermax in Florence is not a controversial issue at all.

Block glibly closes the interview with this anecdote:

"By the way we also called the mayor of Florence, Colorado - Bart Hall - who told us this: 'Florence is used to having very bad boys at the Supermax. We weren't expecting it to house a bunch of kindergartners."

Oh man, that is so funny. Unlike those bitter, humorless Quakers, I just laughed and laughed to think of "more than twenty thousand prisoners in the United States...in special super-maximum security facilities....locked in small, sometimes windowless, cells....A few times a week...let out for showers and solitary exercise....[with] almost no access to educational or recreational activities...." What a riot! Ho! and kindergartners....yes, the idea of children in inhumane detention is just so clever and witty....

I just hope that NPR will hurry up and call up some of America's finest torturers enhanced interrogators so they can regale us with torture humor. Oh Melissa, you certainly are a very bad girl!

F air and B alanced I nformation

Dina Temple-Raston takes on her role of press spokesperson (e.g. 7/27/08, 7/06/08, 10/05/07, etc.) for the FBI and Renee Montagne lends a hand, too. Reporting this morning on the Fort Dix convictions, Montagne makes this astounding claim for the FBI:

"The challenge for the FBI was to decide when to move. Arrest the men too soon and the case against them could collapse. Wait too long and an attack could actually happen."

Temple-Raston, however, is not satisfied to make this claim only for the Fort Dix case, but extends it to all FBI terrorism cases:

• "Their [the FBI] attempts to make terrorism arrests preemptively before an actual attack takes place have met with mixed results."

• "In the Fort Dix case, they held back and allowed the evidence to accumulate....in earlier cases law enforcement tended to move in early."

• "Monday's guilty verdict has made the Fort Dix case Exhibit A for those who say law enforcement has found the right balance between moving too soon and losing a conviction, or waiting too long and risking an actual attack."

• "....says Europe has been trying to get the United States to strike this balance for some time."

Temple-Raston doesn't offer a single shred of evidence to back up her assertion that the FBI has moved on cases too early because of the possibility of imminent attacks. In fact in the Liberty City case, one of the most egregious examples of the FBI rolling out a weak case, even the Wall Street Journal (!) noted that the political benefit of the Bush administration seemed to be the motivating factor:

"When the seven men from the Liberty City area of Miami were arrested a few months before the 2006 elections, then-AG Alberto Gonzales said the men had been taped promising to fight a 'full ground war against the United States.'"

Temple-Raston simply claims that what the FBI learned in the Liberty City case was that "boots and crazy talk aren't enough to convince a jury." Boots and crazy talk? Now that is a professional assesment....

Instead of informing us of how sloppy, dishonest, and undemocratic the FBI has been under the Bush administration and how cases have been rushed for political advantage, Temple-Raston simply manufactures a false dichotomy between the FBI acting or facing a terrorist attack.

Boot Licking Good

Ever wonder how NPR might cover the emergence of a police state and the gutting of the Constitution in the United States? No need to speculate: consider how they cover federal, state and local police hiring informants to spy on legal dissent, raiding homes of law abiding citizens with frivolous search warrants, ordering preventive detentions of citizens, and illegally assaulting and arresting reporters: they don't.

Not only does NPR not cover the illegality of police behavior, but during many of the hourly news summaries I've heard in the last several days they've blamed any violence on demonstrators and linked police actions to demonstrators who've committed vandalism (without any suggestion that some of these could well be the actions of mole/provocateurs).

Right Out of the Movies

NPR was in a festive mood on Saturday, celebrating the 100th birthday of the FBI. On Weekend Edition Saturday, agent Temple-Raston was excitedly telling us about the heroics of 102 yr. old former FBI agent, Walter Walsh. Completely ignoring FBI assaults on our civil liberties (as usual), NPR simply lionizes the FBI.

Temple-Raston describes the career of ex-agent Walsh in adoring, comic-book style:

• "Walsh was an FBI agent in those days when the life of an agent seemed right out of the movies."
• "...he's sharp and funny and there's a twinkle in his eye."

Then on All Things Considered Andrea Seabrook runs with the movie metaphor, telling us "Here are a few of our favorite FBI flicks [sound clips play from G-Men, Point Break, Breach, Silence of the Lambs, and Catch Me If You Can ] - just a few of the great FBI moments from movie history."

Seabrook finished this commercial with an invitation: "What are your favorite FBI movies, visit NPR.org and click 'contact us' and send us a note with 'FBI Movie' in the subject line." Call me gullible, but I took NPR up on the offer. Here was my note to them:

Dear NPR staff:

Andrea Seabrook invited suggestions for FBI movies. Here are a few that might take a bit of the shine off the celebratory tone that NPR has adopted for the FBI centenary:

The Murder of Fred Hampton
The U.S. vs. John Lennon
Incident at Oglala
Ruby Ridge: Anatomy of a Tragedy
Waco: The Rules of Engagement

These movies would help correct NPR's lopsided portrayal of the FBI as simply heroic and would convey its more troubling role as a weapon of government power exceeding and often abusing its legal role.

Thanks.

Stay tuned...

Community Radio - Intelligence Community That Is

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Tom Gjelten is on ME today talking about the two major candidates latest turns against rule of law and Constitutional liberties. It's an odd report in that Gjelten seems not to be reporting on the relationship between the candidates and the "Intelligence Community," but to be actually speaking for that "community"....

Gjelten's statements about FISA and Obama are misleading. Of Obama Gjelten states,

"he's advised on intelligence matters by John Brennan, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Like many intelligence professionals, Brennan says the FISA program is essential to the fight against terrorism - by adopting Brennan's view, Obama improves his standing with the intelligence community. For someone looking ahead to a presidential administration, that's important."

When Gjelten refers to Brennan and "many intelligence professionals" saying that "the FISA program is essential to the fight against terrorism" he is continuing to cloud the issue, implying that Obama's original stand against unconstitutional and illegal disregard for FISA (which is what the Bush administration has done) was a stand against FISA. FISA has never expired, and the government has had and continues to have the lawful means under FISA for intercepting suspected terrorist emails, phonecalls, etc. What Obama is now supporting is the Orwellian Protect America Act amendments to FISA, and as Glenn Greenwald so cogently explains,

"What Barack Obama did here was wrong and destructive. He's supporting a bill that is a full-scale assault on our Constitution and an endorsement of the premise that our laws can be broken by the political and corporate elite whenever the scary specter of The Terrorists can be invoked to justify it."

It is also worth noting that Gjelten fails to mention that Brennan is also in the intelligence profiteering business; he's the president and CEO of The Analysis Corporation - and so would have a vested interest in getting Obama to back more invasive surveillance and immunity to lawbreaking telecoms.

Cuba Calling

"President Bush today challenged the Cuban government to make good on its apparent commitment to reform," says Michele Norris on Wednesday's ATC. She's not kidding. I guess poor Mee-shill doesn't see the irony of the head coach of Team Torture calling for reform on the little island where said team has one of its most notorious little workout camps. Norris finishes her opening lines with "Bush said he would allow Americans to send cell phones to Cubans." That's pretty rich, too. I wonder if it might be some of those same phones that the Decider had tracked while he trashed our quaint little Constitution - and got away with it?

I know, I know - I'm such a fuddy-duddy when it comes to our Bill of Rights. What really matters, according to Tom Gjelten, is "The issue of how the United States can support democracy in Cuba under the changing conditions there..." Democracy...seriously...just like in Haiti, Nicaragua, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, etc.

Stopping Short

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This morning NPR News covers the Padilla conviction. The story does note that Padilla was held for "over three years, incommunicado and without access to a lawyer." But "torture" never comes up - what else can you call the Soviet style treatment that was documented by Padilla's lawyers and never disputed by the judge in the case.

The most shameful aspect of this morning's report is the way NPR's FBI correspondent, Temple-Raston, frames the whole "dirty bomb" sham that the Bush Administration used to seize and torture Padilla in the first place. Here's what Temple-Raston says:

"...prosecutors in Miami stopped short of charging Padilla with the allegations he may be most famous identified with - that he met with Osama Bin Laden and was dispatched to the US to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb. Instead prosecutors built a case around a terrorism conspiracy..."

Read that carefully. She is asserting that there is substance to the "dirty bomb" charges. It's just that prosecutors "stopped short of charging Padilla" with the dirty bomb plot and "instead" built a different case. This is complete spin. The "dirty bomb" allegations were groundless, and in fact were obtained by - guess what? - torture (the word that must not be spoken). Toward the end of the report Temple-Raston does mention that "the allegations of planning a dirty bomb attack couldn't be substantiated," but notice how weak and open ended that is compared to her initial statements.

I don't expect NPR to denounce the jury's verdict, no matter how scandalously rushed their deliberations were. It was a lawful (albeit red, white and blue) jury - but the cavalier attitude to such gross government behavior is really shameful.

I Am Padilla

(source of Padilla photos)

"I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." - Eugene V. Debs

I've been thinking a lot about NPR's coverage - or lack thereof - of the Padilla case. I can barely stand to listen to NPR's treatment of Padilla's latest sham trial as if it were a typical criminal case notable only for "the circuitous route the government took in bringing Padilla's case to trial." What NPR never takes head-on is the fundamental assault on our most cherished Constitutional protections that the Padilla 3 year and 8 month detention and torture represents.

As I listen to the latest drivel from Greg Allen and Liane Hansen and hear them consider how strong the government's current "case" against Padilla is, I keep wondering when will they ask the most crucial question: "Why aren't people being held accountable and brought to trial for the illegal detention and torture of this innocent citizen?" And yes, I assert forcefully that Mr. Padilla is innocent until proven guilty (a quaint position I'll admit).

I think what disgusts me most about NPR is their utter moral relativism and servility to the government framing of issues. Do they give a crap about our Constitutional protections against arbitrary detention and guarantees of a trial by jury? Is there any depravity they will categorically denounce, even if it is sanctioned by one or all of the branches of the US government? Will they ever just call torture torture without qualifying and minimizing it? What is clear is that NPR clearly believes in maintaining standards such as giving the Office of President undeserved deference and respect - repeatedly playing without challenge speeches by and assertions of Bush as if he hadn't already proven himself a sociopath and liar.

I remember the utter shock and horror I felt when I learned of Padilla's seizure and subsequent disappearance. As the falseness of the "dirty bomb" claims have proven, there was no reason for such draconian actions, except to establish the precedent of allowing US citizens to be detained, disappeared and abused at the whim of the President--a precedent which NPR buttresses with its silence and timidity.