{"id":6064,"date":"2013-08-20T16:11:19","date_gmt":"2013-08-20T20:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=6064"},"modified":"2013-08-20T16:31:24","modified_gmt":"2013-08-20T20:31:24","slug":"my-2008-speech-bushs-war-on-civil-liberties-transcript","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/20\/my-2008-speech-bushs-war-on-civil-liberties-transcript\/","title":{"rendered":"My 2008 FFF Speech: Bush’s War on Civil Liberties – Transcript"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ffflogo\"The Future of Freedom Foundation<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0is producing transcripts from its 2007 and 2008 conferences. \u00a0Following is the text of my speech at their June 2008 conference, \u00a0\u201cRestoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy & Civil Liberties\u201d held in Reston, Virginia. \u00a0My opening bit about having lunch with Homeland Security czar Mike Chertoff and getting the scoop on which conference attendees were on the Terrorist Watch List made some audience members nervous. \u00a0(Here is a PDF<\/a> of the speech.)<\/p>\n

At a time when some folks are castigating the Obama administration as the most oppressive in U.S. history, this review of some of Bush era atrocities shows that how the outrages have long been bipartisan.<\/p>\n

Bush\u2019s War on Civil Liberties\u00a0<\/strong>by James Bovard \u00a0June 4, 2008<\/p>\n

Jacob Hornberger<\/strong>: James Bovard, our next speaker, is the author of Attention Deficit Disorder, [sic – Democracy] \u00a0Lost Rights, and seven other books. He has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Reader\u2019s Digest, and many other publications. The Wall Street Journal called Jim \u201cthe roving inspector general of the modern state.\u201d His book Terrorism and Tyranny received the Lysander Spooner Award for best book on liberty in 2003. At the Future of Freedom Foundation, we are proud of the fact that Jim serves as policy adviser for FFF and has been writing a regular monthly column in our journal Freedom Daily for some 15 years. The title of Jim\u2019s talk is \u201cBush\u2019s War on Civil Liberties.\u201d Please welcome Jim Bovard.<\/p>\n

James Bovard<\/strong>: I want to thank Bumper for his kind words and for inviting me to speak at this conference. Bumper has been a good influence on me. He\u2019s kept me from becoming too moderate. It\u2019s great to see so many fine folks here. It\u2019s great to see so many folks came back from last year. It makes for a really wonderful audience here. But I was curious about one thing: I always try to get a sense of the audience. How many people here are guilty of treason? That\u2019s about the same count that I estimated. And how many people here are on the terrorist watch list? Sheldon, you\u2019re on the list. You should have raised your hand. That\u2019s actually about the right number.
\nI had lunch yesterday with Mike Chertoff, Homeland Security secretary. I gave him a list of the attendees and Mike ran to the computer. He said about 68 percent were actually on the list. Well, actually, what Chertoff said was, \u201c68 percent are on the list so far. And the fact that they came to this conference, I think that maybe adds to your permanent record.\u201d
\nIt\u2019s interesting, on this notion of treason. It was on December 6, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft told the U.S. Congress, \u201cTo those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and give ammunition to America\u2019s enemies.\u201d This is how the Bush administration– this was their de facto definition of treason: people who talked about the phantoms of lost liberty. And at the time Ashcroft said that, he was aware that the Bush administration had already started a massive illegal warrantless wiretap program here in the U.S., targeting Americans. But that didn\u2019t count as a lost liberty because the government was doing it. After that, it didn\u2019t matter what the government did; the real enemy was people who talked about losing freedom. And also, I guess those guys that are in Al-Qaeda. Those guys are also the enemy.
\nBut if you look at the rhetoric of the Bush administration– Ashcroft, Cheney, a lot of others– look at where they focused their wrath. And it\u2019s on people like many of those in this audience who have had the courage to speak up and say that the government is trampling their rights. The government has gone beyond its rightful bounds.
\nNow, part of the challenge of this speech topic– I was looking at the title and this whole notion of civil liberties– I\u2019m wondering if it\u2019s supposed to be a lecture on ancient history. I\u2019m wondering if it\u2019s some kind of quaint superstition from bygone times, because isn\u2019t civil liberties what people were concerned about during the Clinton administration? And that was last century. And besides, he was guilty about the intern. It\u2019s fascinating to see how far things have gone to hell in a hand basket on the freedom front. There are folks I\u2019ve talked to in the audience. There was a gentleman from Wisconsin. I spoke there three years ago and it\u2019s interesting, even in the past three years, how much worse things have become. There was an Associated Press report a few weeks ago that said that for at least 16 months after 9\/11, the Bush administration believed that the Constitution\u2019s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. soil did not apply against its efforts to protect against terrorism. So basically, anything that was involved with terrorism was exempt from the Constitution. And this is what the Bush administration did at the same time that they were very vigorously attacking anyone who said the government was breaking the law or violating liberty.
\nSome of the examples on surveillance– you\u2019ll probably hear more about this later on in the weekend– but since 2001, the FBI has sent out hundreds of thousands of national security letters, and these are basically warrantless demands. A person can receive the letter and they are instantly gagged. They were prohibited from even telling their lawyer. And if a person discloses they received one of these letters, they could be sent to prison for several years. And hundreds of thousands of these letters were sent out, and the FBI often lied when they sent them out. They would claim there was an investigation; there wasn\u2019t. The Inspector General looked into this and found pervasive FBI perjury on this, but there weren\u2019t any crimes because they were federal agents; perjury is something that the private citizens do.
\nThe warrantless wiretaps: Back in the summer of 2003, John Ashcroft campaigned across the nation in a Patriot Act salvation tour. There was a lot of beating up in the Patriot Act. John Ashcroft went all around the country. It turned out, most of his audiences were closed and often they were simply local police. And in many cases the press was not allowed to ask any questions. But this is how the Bush administration tried to save the honor of the Patriot Act. Another huge element: the warrantless roundup of e-mail. My impression from what I\u2019ve read, the bits and pieces on places like Wired.com and others, the Feds apparently feel they don\u2019t need any warrant to round up U.S.-to-foreign e-mail, or e-mail that comes in from abroad. This is automatically some type of suspect category, and the information that they\u2019re storing, like this. And on another thing– calling data records– Congress in 1986 passed a law that prohibited the telephone companies from giving calling data records, in general, to the government without a warrant or without a subpoena. What\u2019s happened since 9\/11 is that Verizon, a lot of other companies, have simply kept records of all the incoming and outgoing phone calls made or received by American citizens, and they have turned these records over to the government. And so you\u2019ve got federal records of the phone activity of tens of millions of Americans, most of whom are not members of Al-Qaeda, but it didn\u2019t matter. The government did not even need a whiff of suspicion, but this is another huge step that the government took towards erecting a system of total information awareness.
\nNow, people with distant memories will recall, back in 2002, the Homeland Security czar at that time talked about that– a former Navy admiral named Poindexter, who had been convicted for numerous charges in the 1980s, I think including perjury. I\u2019m not sure if he was convicted of perjury; maybe obstruction of justice. They were overturned on appeal or they were pardoned by Bush or whatever– Bush won– but he [Poindexter] was put in charge of building up this massive surveillance system. But after the term \u201ctotal information awareness\u201d got out, there was a backlash. People were horrified. Congress was indignant, and so what the Bush administration did was fire that guy and change the name of the surveillance system.
\nAnd basically simply by changing the name, they\u2019ve been able to perpetuate a lot of the same things that they were doing back then and they\u2019ve taken it far further. There\u2019s so much data mining going on right now, on financial records, on phone records, and this is not information that they\u2019re looking at once to see if there were criminal ties or if you\u2019re getting wire transfers from Egypt; no, this is all part of your permanent record. The government has these massive data warehouses that they\u2019re stockpiling this information on, and you don\u2019t know how it\u2019s going to be used in the future.
\nAnd this is a key change in the nature of American liberty because the more information government has on people, the fewer people will have the courage to resist the government. This was true in the 1960s and early \u201970s with the Cointel program– a massive program to target the anti-war movement, to target the blacks like Martin Luther King, targeting some white racists and other groups. But there was an FBI agent who said at that point that the goal was to make the anti-war people think that there was an FBI agent hidden behind every mailbox. And we haven\u2019t reached that point yet, but at this point it\u2019s easy to imagine there\u2019s a federal agent overseeing every Internet service provider. And any sense of sanctity of private data, it\u2019s gone. Because there have been very few companies that have the gumption to tell the government no, and when companies do, the government brings its wrath down upon them.
\nAnother thing that\u2019s going on right now: the FBI is building up a network of 15,000 covert informants here in the U.S. to feed it reports about possible terrorists and foreign spies. It\u2019s kind of a problem when you get a network of 15,000 people to feed you information about terrorists when there are apparently not very many terrorists. I mean, it sort of turns into a self-fulfilling kind of thing, because if you look at many of the most high-profiled terrorism prosecutions since 9\/11, they were basically government manufactured. This case down in Miami, of these boneheads who were out there asking for terrorist uniforms and wanted to hold a terrorist parade, basically. And these are the folks that the Justice Department is assuring us pose the greatest threat to the Sears Tower? I mean, these are folks who probably could not have even made it to Chicago, even if you gave them a bus ticket. I mean, these are folks who got lost in Memphis where they were supposed to transfer.
\nBut it\u2019s a standard of what this country\u2019s become. The Justice Department made this one of their most high-profile cases and took it to a jury in Florida, and the government lost. But the government wasn\u2019t satisfied. The government brought in a new jury, a new case. They lost again. And they are bringing this case a third time. I mean, this is a legal atrocity. The folks who have been prosecuted, they\u2019re sure as heck not model citizens, but they are typical of a lot of the arrests since 9\/11. These are people who would not have posed any real danger unless the government was feeding them and egging them on.
\nAnd there\u2019s a pattern on this going back a long ways in American history. There were a number of cases of violence in the 1960s that were done by government instigators. Government instigators would join groups and then urge them to become violent. And these 15,000 covert informants the FBI is building up, what is their code of conduct? Certainly, the FBI has a very dubious record on that in the past. And what would those informants get bonuses for? That\u2019s the thing: what is their incentive? Justice and fair play, this is not how you move up the FBI or up their network of informants.
\nAnother thing that\u2019s going on right now: the Bush administration is pushing to create a new program to allow Pentagon spy satellites to pass on information about Americans to state and local law enforcement agencies. Needless to say, there would not be a lot of paperwork as far as warrants to be done with this, but this is the kind of surveillance that was long seen as completely illegal. But very few people are objecting to this in Washington right now. The thought of handing photos and Pentagon spy satellites to local law enforcement, it might cut down on the number of underage sex romps in Montana haystacks; but as far as having any real effect on public safety, it doesn\u2019t. But it\u2019s just one more way the government can tighten the screws on the American people.
\nAnother example that\u2019s going on– it\u2019s going to be happening across airports around the country now– is that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has brought in a new type of screening machine, called the backscatter X-ray, which allows the government to see through people\u2019s clothes. And this is also something which could go on your permanent record, because if someone would trust the TSA not to keep dirty pictures, that\u2019s a real triumph of faith. And think of some of the movie stars or famous females going through there; what would their photo be worth? That\u2019s the kind of thing. But there\u2019s been so little controversy about this. This is something that editors don\u2019t want to hear about, in most cases. This is something which politicians are ignoring. It\u2019s one more example of how people are simply falling in line in this country.
\nNow, it\u2019s interesting to see some of the doctrines that are flourishing under the Bush administration. In a speech to the Fairness Society last year, Bush said that \u201cWhen Americans go to court they deserve swift and fair answers.\u201d Unless, of course, the administration decides to give them no answers. Nothing illustrates this better than the state secrets doctrine. This is something that originated in 1950s after a crash of a B-29 bomber. The widows of the crash victims sued, asserting their husbands died because of government negligence. But the Air Force said that the official report of the crash revealed classified information that could not be disclosed without endangering national security. Well, 50 years later the actual report was disclosed, and it had nothing to do with national security. It said that the government screwed up. But the Air Force swayed the courts to accept this, and the Supreme Court rubber-stamped that doctrine.
\nAnd ever since then, this has been used in this country; it\u2019s spreading like a mushroom cloud. Something the Bush administration does is use claims of state secrets to prohibit torture victims from disclosing to their defense attorneys the specific interrogation methods that they suffered. A Justice Department spokeswoman said that letting a former Maryland resident tell his lawyer the methods that were used on him would risk disclosing potentially highly classified information that is vital to our country\u2019s ability to fight terrorism. It\u2019s been all over the papers, a lot of the methods the government has used, but it\u2019s still a state secret because the government says so.
\nState secrets were used to cloak the case of Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese decent who was vacationing in Macedonia in 2003. Bad vacation choice on his part. He was kidnapped by the CIA there. He was stripped, he was beaten, he was shackled, and he was flown to a secret interrogation center in Afghanistan where he was tortured for four months. The CIA eventually realized they had the wrong guy. It turns out that there was somebody in a terrorist cell in Hamburg named Masri, but this guy– he was, like, a used car dealer in Frankfort, and it was well known, it was very easy to prove– but they still spent four months torturing the guy. After four months, he was flown to Albania, and he was dumped on the side of the road.
\nThe European Union investigated and confirmed his allegations. The German government issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents in 2007 for their role in his kidnap and torture. Masri\u2019s story was all over Europe, and he was interviewed by \u201c60 Minutes\u201d and other American media. Masri sued the CIA chief Tenet, three private aviation companies, and 20 unnamed employees of the CIA and other affiliates. The ACLU, which took this case, said the Supreme Court should not allow the U.S. government to engage in torture, declare it a state secret, and avoid any judicial accountability. It went to a federal appeals court, which said the government did the right thing to sacrifice Masri\u2019s \u201cpersonal interest for the general and collective interests of national security.\u201d
\nNow, these federal appeals judges did not explain how covering up this specific case made Americans safer, but it didn\u2019t matter. They were kowtowing to the government. In October 2007, the Supreme Court announced that it would not hear this case. It effectively banned Masri from American courtrooms. Apparently as long as the U.S. government has not confessed, it is a state secret. And this is a legal absurdity, and yet, this is what the government has gotten away with again and again and again. And this is a major reason why the full details of the torture scandal have not come out yet, because of the U.S. government using these arguments that don\u2019t pass a laugh test.
\nYet you have these judges who are so complicit in tyranny at this point. The state secrets doctrine is also key to the wiretapping cases. Last year, a federal appeals court overturned a lower court decision that had condemned the National Security Agency\u2019s warrantless wiretaps of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Americans. This was a case that was brought by individuals who believed their phone calls or e-mails had been intercepted by the government without a warrant. But the Justice Department claimed that these people had no standing to sue because the Feds refused to disclose whether they had actually violated these individuals\u2019 rights under privacy. A federal appeals court threw the case out. Judge Alice Batchelder, who was on the short list of nominees for the Supreme Court last time, wrote that the plaintiffs are ultimately prevented from establishing standing because of the state secrets privilege. This is a judge\u2019s version of frat-party ethics: as long as the government blindfolds its victims, it can do as it pleases. There were such bizarre convolutions to justify overthrowing this case, and yet it was applauded by the Washington Post editorial page, which has been on the wrong side of many of the most important issues over the last six or seven years.
\nAs far as civil liberties, as far as understanding how the government can treat people, can treat American citizens and treat everybody else, the torture scandal kind of summarizes how this nation and how perhaps American values have changed. People now face the prospect of being sentenced to death because of their own tortured confession or because of the tortured confession of other people down at Guantanamo or Afghanistan or other places. It\u2019s turning back the clock at least two to three hundred years: the thought of using torture confessions in judicial proceedings. It looks like it\u2019s out of a Monty Python movie, and yet not only is it happening in America at this point, in Guantanamo, but so far has not been very controversial. There are some people here who are speaking later this week who have done magnificent work on this issue. But overall, this issue has not gotten anywhere near the traction.
\nNow, it\u2019s interesting; from the first days after the Abu Ghraib photos hit the airwaves, the torture scandal epitomized the worst of the Bush administration. There were a timid media, a cowardly opposition party, a refusal by most Americans to face the grisly facts. There was a web of lies, a lawlessness, but this may be on the verge of unraveling. There are challenges from foreign governments, from some courageous U.S. military officers, and the Supreme Court still could come around and do something good on this. But it\u2019s frustrating to see that the media still act as if Bush deserves deference when he denies the U.S.\u2019s involvement in torturing, or he says that the U.S. wouldn\u2019t do something like this.
\nIn 2005, Bush repeatedly explicitly said the U.S. would not use rendition, which means seizing a suspect in one nation and transferring him to another country where he would be tortured. Bush was explicit on this. However, it turned out that the U.S. has been doing that en masse. There have been books on this. There have been documentaries. But it turned out that Bush lied on this through his teeth, and yet he\u2019s still treated as credible on the torture issue.
\nNow, it\u2019s interesting how the government uses the illegal doctrines and what it\u2019s done to achieve absolute power over an individual. There was the case of David Hicks, an Australian who was seized in Afghanistan and sent to Guantanamo in early 2002. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said that Hicks was one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world. During his five years\u2019 confinement, Hicks was sexually assaulted, beaten with a rifle butt, kept in isolation in the dark for 244 days, prohibited from sleeping for long periods, threatened with firearms during interrogations, and psychologically tormented. Hicks\u2019s abuse became a major issue in Australia, where a Bush ally, Prime Minister John Howard, was involved in a hard fight for reelection. Hicks was the first person tried by the Guantanamo military tribunals. He faced the death penalty. However, the Bush administration wanted to help John Howard, so Hicks was allowed to plead guilty to material support of terrorism and he was sentenced to nine months\u2019 confinement.
\nNow, this is the kind of penalty that\u2019s generally used for a drunk driving repeat offender. Instead, you have it used for this guy who Rumsfeld said was one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world. As part of his plea agreement, Hicks was prohibited from speaking to the media for one year, until after the Australian election. Hicks was also obliged to sign a statement declaring that he had never been illegally treated by any person or persons while in the custody and control of the U.S. and to swear that his guilty plea was done voluntarily, despite all the beatings he received. That summarizes it: lying about torture was the price of freedom for Hicks. The only way they would let him go is if he would sign these statements.
\nAnd my impression is that the same happens often in other terrorist prosecutions, and in a lot of other federal prosecutions as well. Now, it\u2019s interesting, there are still Congressmen and a lot of conservative talk show hosts who say that this concern about torture is all a liberal fantasy. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of California– whom a lot of people thought of as a fairly Libertarian Congressman– even a couple of days ago, he was mocking an Inspector General\u2019s report on the abuses at Guantanamo, saying it was just like college fraternity hazing. Well, even bad frats usually don\u2019t kill that many people. And a lot of people have died because of U.S. interrogations in the last six years.
\nAs far as how the Bush folks have tried to contain the damage from the torture scandal, they\u2019ve tried a couple of different things. One is simply outright lying, saying that the U.S. government is not doing this, and second is using secrets to buttress their lies. Last October, the New York Times got a leaked Justice Department memo, from early 2005, which permitted the CIA interrogators to use \u201ccombined effects on detainees.\u201d These included head slapping, water boarding, frigid temperatures, manacling for many hours, and blasting them with loud music to keep them from sleeping for days on end. The New York Times said this was an expansion and endorsement of the harshest methods ever used by the CIA. This came out at the same time the Bush folks were saying, \u201cWe do not torture. We obey the law.\u201d But Bush very quickly came out and said, after the New York Times story came out, \u201cThis government does not torture people.\u201d He said that \u201cWe stick to U.S. law and our international obligations.\u201d But this is law as contorted by administration lawyers, and as some of their recent memoirs have shown, the Bush administration doctrine is that as long as there is one lawyer who will say to Bush, \u201cYes, this is legal,\u201d that\u2019s good enough. Rule of law now means to find a single bootlicking lawyer to applaud the president. The whole notion of checks and balances has been lost, and any notion of accountability.
\nNow, another fascinating part about this New York Times story: it detailed how, after 9\/11, the CIA had constructed an interrogation regime by consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods. It\u2019s interesting; for decades the U.S. condemned the Soviet Union for using torture. But interrogation systems designed to compel victims to sign false confessions are now the model for protecting America in the new century. It\u2019s hard to convey how much this symbolizes how this nation has changed. And it\u2019s great, the Future of Freedom Foundation has been in the forefront of organizations that have been uncompromising on this issue. And there have been a number of Libertarian organizations that have kept quiet on this, especially here in the D.C. area, or else they have come to it very lately. I mean, it\u2019s always sad if a Libertarian organization is slower than the Washington Post editorial page to condemn a government abuse, but this has happened a lot of times over the last few years.
\nNow, a final issue on the state of American liberty, American civil liberties: it goes to the question of the rule of law. And I think one of the biggest troubles we have in this country right now is that it is presumed that the U.S. president has a right to kill foreigners– it\u2019s rarely stated that bluntly– but just as long as he doesn\u2019t kill too many of them at one time, and as long as his spokesmen offer certain rationales. There are a lot of international obligations the U.S. signed that would curtail the U.S. ability to kill innocent foreigners. These seem to no longer be binding. To see the rules of engagement the U.S. has used again and again in Afghanistan and Iraq, there has been so little hesitation about just bombing houses full of women and children. And if you look at what the military courts-martial have effectively approved, almost all the murder charges in November 2005 in the village of Haditha, U.S. Marines went on a rampage. Twenty-four civilians, mostly women and children, were killed. At the time, it was a big outrage, but the cases have been dropped one by one. The government has plea-bargained stuff down to wrist slaps, and there\u2019s almost no outrage.
\nTwo years ago, when the news of that massacre was first hitting the airwaves, Americans were shocked. Well, this is how we\u2019re fighting the war. Now it\u2019s buried in page A-27 if it\u2019s carried in the papers at all. And this is another sign of how Americans are becoming coarsened to government barbaric power. And it doesn\u2019t work to say, well, this is only abroad. I mean, it\u2019s not like this is going to have any recoil on us, because the stuff that we allow the U.S. government to do abroad will come back to haunt us. There have been so many atrocities which came back to permeate the U.S. drug war here at home, for instance. And there is an attitude towards human beings which the U.S. government has been showing in recent years abroad, especially in Iraq, especially in Afghanistan. And we see it now, there are so many politicians who are gung ho on attacking Iran, and it\u2019s never quite clear what the average Iranian has done; but there\u2019s very little doubt about how the U.S. government would have the right to kill them in order to teach their government a lesson or to break their government\u2019s power.
\nAnd so few people are asking, \u201cWhere did the U.S. president get this moral authority to kill foreigners?\u201d Because it\u2019s not in the Constitution. It wasn\u2019t something the Founding Fathers believed; but this is a sign of how deferential people have become to the U.S. government and to the claims of the U.S. president. And these are attitudes that are absolutely irreconcilable with preserving a free society. This whole notion that the president has a right to order foreign attacks the same way that he gets to hear \u201cHail to the Chief\u201d play when he enters a room: I mean, that is a level of automatic pilot that a lot of the American foreign policy thinking is on. Even seven or eight years ago, people would think that the intellectuals, the policy experts and others, would stand up and resist if the government was going towards barbarism. Well, that didn\u2019t happen very much in the last six years. There were far more intellectuals who jumped on the bandwagon than stood out and called the B.S. for what it was. And because of that, that\u2019s one more reason: it doesn\u2019t matter who wins in November; the U.S. government is going to remain a grave peril to our rights and liberties.
\nAnd there is little evidence that Americans have learned much if any lessons from the debacles of the last six, seven years. If you see how the GOP is running their campaign, this strange notion that people want a third term from George Bush, I mean, that\u2019s mystifying. But it\u2019s based on almost a perpetual propaganda operation in which they never admit their failures and never admit that they\u2019ve killed innocent people and never admit that they have tortured innocent people to death, and never admit what they have ordered other people to do. So far, the American people have allowed the Congress and the U.S. government to largely absolve itself from the war crimes and other abuses that have occurred over the last six years. And it\u2019s a great sign that as many people have come out for this conference as have, because these are folks who would not let the government get away with that kind of thing.
\nBut it\u2019s puzzling why the abuses that have gone on have not resonated more. And if anything, what\u2019s happened in the last six years is we\u2019ve learned a lot more about the nature of American conservativism, and it\u2019s a lot darker than many people suspected. There are a lot of individual exceptions, and some magazines, at least one magazine, that\u2019s done some fine work. But to see what conservatives have embraced, to see how conservatives have embraced that expansive definition of treason that I started the talk with, to see how they have this instant push-button hatred towards any nation that the president says is an axis of evil, to see their utter intolerance–
\nGeorge Bush did not like seeing protests; that\u2019s an understatement. But something which the White House would do before Bush would travel to the place to give a speech, they would send out these little manuals and all of these guidelines on how they\u2019re supposed to prepare for the speech. And there were all these things on how to make sure that troublemakers didn\u2019t get into the speech. They were saying, \u201cWell, it\u2019s good if you have a clearance process, so on and so forth.\u201d But they had a last line of defense, which really epitomizes how this nation has changed: If the system failed and dissidents got into the speech, and if the dissidents started to make noise, then what the rally organizers had to do beforehand is have rally squads, basically young people who are ready to go to any place in the auditorium and chant \u201cU.S.A., U.S.A.\u201d to drown out the protesters. And this is from the White House. This is official White House policy. This is how the White House wanted the local organizers around the country to respond to anybody trying to speak up during a Bush event.
\nAnd this is something which came out late last summer from an ACLU lawsuit. The news media paid almost no attention to it, but this symbolizes how this nation has changed in recent years. If Bill Clinton had done that, and if the news of Bill Clinton doing that had come out, can you imagine? Which we would have heard about from the nation\u2019s top talk show hosts every day for a month. Bush did it: page A-13, three paragraphs, right next to the ad for Home Depot. So it has no impact. But hopefully, there are still enough Americans who have kept some of the old values and appreciate, have a clear understanding of the danger of government power, that the government can be pushed back to its rightful place. But in the short term, things look bad, and I would think almost no matter who wins in November, we\u2019re going to have a lousy president for the next four years.
\n<applause>
\nAnyhow, that\u2019s my two cents, and I\u2019d enjoy hearing questions or hearing what people in the audience think.
\n<applause>
\nQ: <inaudible>
\nJames Bovard: I don\u2019t know.
\nQ: Jim, you\u2019re a hard guy to listen to <inaudible>
\nJames Bovard: All right, thanks.
\nQ: A couple months ago, I got a link in an e-mail to a video, an online video, that looked like a documentary that might have been made in <inaudible> based on the accents of the people involved and the narrator. One of the videos was to make the case that Al-Qaeda didn\u2019t even really exist prior to the FBI putting some guy from the Middle East up on the stand in some kind of trial back in the late \u201990s. And <inaudible> the whole idea that all <inaudible> has an international network or web of terrorists bent on killing Americans. Are you aware of, maybe not the video, but that idea that Al-Qaeda was kind of a made-up idea and that Osama bin Laden himself was just a two-bit guy, that he may have been a rich guy that funded terrorism but wasn\u2019t the leader of a big network? Any idea whether that has any truth?
\nJames Bovard: I\u2019ve heard that allegation. I honestly don\u2019t know. It\u2019s sad to see how the Bush administration inflated Al-Qaeda after 9\/11and tried to make them almost like the new boogeyman. It\u2019s sad to see how many people swallowed the notion that Al-Qaeda posed practically as much or more of a threat than the Soviet Union did at the time they had thousands of missiles pointed at us. It\u2019s sad to see how few people challenge that story as far as exaggerating Al-Qaeda\u2019s peril, but as far as whether it\u2019s basically a federal invention? I\u2019ve heard that; I don\u2019t know.
\nQ: I\u2019m still baffled about these folks who have been imprisoned in illegal camps and tortured, and how they can somehow sign a statement as a deal in order to get released, that they can\u2019t speak. How can that contract even be enforced?
\nJames Bovard: <Laughs>
\nQ: A contract is not valid if it\u2019s for an illegal purpose.
\nJames Bovard: Well, unless the government did it. I\u2019m serious on that. I think what happened with Hicks, he was still under confinement during that time in which they had prohibited him from talking to the press. So the government could keep an eye on him real good, I think. I think this is going to fall apart on them though.
\nQ: How did we actually find out about the case that you mentioned? Did he waive his–
\nJames Bovard: On the Hicks case?
\nQ: Yes.
\nJames Bovard: There was a lot of great coverage of this in the foreign media: I think the British media, probably the Australian media, some good stuff on some of the Internet sites in the U.S.
\nQ: But how did they find out about it if he had sworn to secrecy?
\nJames Bovard: That was part of the plea agreement I think the government announced.
\nQ: So did he break his signed statement to not talk? That\u2019s my question.
\nJames Bovard: I don\u2019t think he has done that yet.
\nQ: So how do we know that it even happened?
\nJames Bovard: What happened?
\nQ: That he was tortured and then he was asked to sign this statement for his release?
\nJames Bovard: Hicks did talk to people before the plea agreement, so Hicks gave out a lot of information, and that was part of the added pressure on the John Howard government in Australia and on the U.S. government on that; so Hicks had a lot of active friends. Hicks is kind of a funny case because prior to going to Afghanistan to join the Taliban, Hicks had gone to Kosovo to join the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army. It\u2019s kind of an interesting paradox. It\u2019s a paradox because the Kosovo Liberation Army was a former terrorist group that the U.S. government decided had become freedom fighters, whereas the Taliban was a group that the U.S. decided had become terrorists. I mean, the dude wasn\u2019t lucky. It\u2019s an interesting thing with U.S. procedures: If he\u2019s captured on the battlefield, that\u2019s one thing. But this whole notion of people captured on the battlefield that can be tortured and held year after year after year; I mean, there\u2019s no support for this in recent American history or in any recent international agreement.
\nQ: You\u2019re talking about all these security procedures that have been implemented. How come nothing really has been done with the borders and ports? Since the government is so concerned with ourselves, it doesn\u2019t seem like much has been done with the borders and ports. I was just wondering if you could maybe comment on that a little bit, and then I\u2019ll ask you the second one, which is–
\nJames Bovard: I thought they were building a fence. I\u2019ve heard a lot about the fence. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s too much of a trouble up in New Hampshire. The ports, they\u2019re doing some things different in the ports. They\u2019ve certainly issued a lot of press releases about that. I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t think there is a consensus they really cracked down that much on immigration at this point. I noticed the raids a week or two ago in Iowa. If I understood right, the U.S. government is charging many of the immigrants that they grab with a crime and threatening to send them to prison, simply for being an illegal immigrant, which seems like a really dumb idea, given the overcrowding in prisons; but I\u2019m sure the government knows what they\u2019re doing.
\nQ: The second question, which is a lot more serious, is what kinds of steps have to take place? What kinds of things have to happen for this whole nightmare to start to unravel in a positive way?
\nJames Bovard: <Laughs> I had a good answer and then you throw in that last phrase, you know? You really threw me off track there. Americans need a clear understanding of the perils of government. This is something I\u2019ve been harping on for a great number of years, and I haven\u2019t quite persuaded the majority of this yet, I don\u2019t think. But people look at the government through a very cloudy lens, rose-colored glasses, I don\u2019t know what, but people need to understand; it doesn\u2019t matter what party somebody is with, they\u2019re still a threat to the rights and liberties. And it\u2019s appalling to me to see that there has been so little backlash against the media, because there was that wonderful New York Times story in April about how most of the top experts, the former generals that they were using to comment on Iraq and Afghanistan, were actually being fed information off some false information by the Pentagon. And a lot of these guys were actually getting Pentagon contracts at the same time they were there, supposedly as independent commentators.
\nAnd it was a fraud up and down, throughout the networks and the cable stations, cable networks. And yet, as far as I know, nobody\u2019s head has rolled on that. There\u2019s been so much government media complicity, I would hope that would be one of the lessons people would draw from the Bush years, but they haven\u2019t done that yet. There seems to be this notion that once George Bush leaves the White House, everything will be safe. I mean, it was the same B.S. we heard back in 2001 when Bill Clinton left the White House. There were so many conservatives who were convinced that because George W. Bush was a family man that didn\u2019t chase skirts, that the nation had nothing to worry about. And it was utterly false back then, and it will be utterly false in January when the media tell us to trust the next president.
\nBut as far as the steps that will happen as far as what needs to be done? People need to read more. People need to speak up. Americans need to show more courage. There was a line I had in the last chapter of Attention-Deficit Democracy, which they\u2019re selling outside. I was trying to be smooth; it didn\u2019t work. The thing we need in this country is to have the average Congressman fear a meeting with his constituents as much as the average taxpayer fears an audit with the IRS.
\n<applause>
\nQ: And I think there are some places in the U.S. where Congressmen do shudder at the thought of meeting their constituents, but very few places. Anger is not a panacea, but certainly, by itself, if it\u2019s not guided, it doesn\u2019t really achieve much. But informed anger, and just to make some of these rascals feel Americans\u2019 wrath, that would be effective.
\n<applause>
\nQ: So, short of the great unraveling that Brian was just talking about, and political reform and people getting involved and setting things right, what can the average citizen do? I\u2019m not sure this is your department, but what can the average citizen do to protect his e-mail? Is there anything that we can do? Just do the best we can to make sure they\u2019re not building a database on us? Or is it hopeless?
\nJames Bovard: Well, don\u2019t send e-mails in Arabic. There are some Internet service providers that are a lot better than others, I think, as far as security. There are some that do back flips to make the government happy with them. I don\u2019t have them off the top of my head. Comcast, I\u2019ve heard. I don\u2019t know that Comcast is an ISP at this point, but they–
\nQ. Comcast is a bad one?
\nJames Bovard: Yeah, oh, yeah. Comcast is way bad. And my impression is Verizon rolled over for the Feds on the warrantless wiretaps and had no troubles with that. As far as a simple issue, the issue of immunity for the telecommunications companies: This is something that Glenn Greenwald will be speaking tomorrow, has done a lot of great work on. This is a real litmus test, whether these telephone companies that violate American law, betrayed their customers, trampled peoples\u2019 privacy, whether they get a pass for violating federal law; these are folks that need to be held accountable. It would be great to see them prosecuted, either now or by the next administration, and to find out what the U.S. government told them. This is not an issue of immunity for private companies. This is an issue of the government allowing it to whitewash its own record. And it\u2019s great that liberals and a lot of leftists have done great work on this issue. It really hasn\u2019t resonated much beyond them, but this is a real telltale issue, and it would be great to see some of these CEOs who broke federal law wearing orange suits.
\n<applause>
\nQ: Don\u2019t worry. I won\u2019t ask you about the Freedom of Information Act.
\nJames Bovard: <Laughs> I was ready for you this year.
\nQ: <laughs> Actually, I was going to make a comment about Australia and John Howard. You said they conveniently waited for Hicks to give his story after the election?
\nJames Bovard: Right.
\nQ: Well, it didn\u2019t matter because John Howard lost.
\nJames Bovard: Yes, it was great. Great to see that rascal go down.
\nQ: My question is, though– maybe you\u2019re not aware of it, maybe it\u2019s not even true, I don\u2019t know. I was listening to the great heroic talk show host Charles Goyette.
\nJames Bovard: He\u2019s great. Charles is excellent.
\nQ: He and Scott Horton, from Antiwar Radio, are the best. I mean, that\u2019s all I listen to. I know he\u2019s here.
\nJames Bovard: Also the best.
\nQ: Both of them are excellent. But I think he was quoted– I think it was a British media, might have been the Guardian, can\u2019t really remember– is that they actually have torture chambers on warships, or some type of ships, I don\u2019t know. Have you heard this?
\nJames Bovard: Basically, all I know is what I read on Antiwar.com. I\u2019ve seen a little bit on this. It doesn\u2019t sound implausible. The U.S. government told so many lies about the renditions. There were so many false statements about how they weren\u2019t grabbing people and flying them around the world to be tortured, so I assume the U.S. government has already said that it\u2019s false if they\u2019re using ships to hold people and to interrogate them. So I\u2019m sure the government\u2019s right this time. But that\u2019s a huge story, especially if it\u2019s true. And I hope people will follow it out, and I hope that some more stuff can come out of that, because this whole notion of secret prisons around the world– That was one of the worst things about the Soviet system. That was what the books on the Gulag, where it helped change the world opinion of the Soviet Union.
\nAnd now, as Amnesty International charged a few years ago, the U.S. government has its own gulag of these secret prisons scattered all over the world. Some of the worst interrogation abuses have gone on in Thailand, which has also done a great job of tyrannizing its own people at times. We have no idea what the U.S. government is doing in our name. And as free citizens, we can\u2019t afford to let the government do atrocities in our own name and say, \u201cWell, we didn\u2019t know. Well, nobody told us.\u201d Well, that\u2019s B.S., because there are good information sources out there. And more importantly, people need to put the heat on the government to tell us what they\u2019ve done.
\nQ: You mentioned the terrorist watch list. With apologies for being a little bit autobiographical: on my way to Europe last year, in the spring of 2007, on a German airline, I was pulled aside and told I had to be inspected. The man said, \u201cI\u2019ll take care of it, sir.\u201d But he said, \u201cYou\u2019re on a watch list.\u201d So what I did is, I inquired. I used to have very sensitive clearances with friends of mine in very senior positions. And may I give you the report, that I am on a watch list, but this is the significant fact I wanted to convey to you and the audience, maybe for your reflection: I was put on that list by two foreign intelligence services. Did you hear that? I would prefer not to say that now in public, but you can well imagine what they are, and they\u2019re related to one another. I mean, they work together. But I was put on that watch list by two foreign intelligence services, and I was told by my friends that they were told I will not be removed from it. So I wanted to indicate that. I mean, it shocked me. They told me there were some things on it that I can do, but I prefer to hide in the open. But I think it\u2019s a significant fact, especially from my own previous background and experience. The second thing I think might be of interest to you, or I\u2019d like your comment on: the last time I saw you is when I was invited to a conference with Pat Buchanan and his neo-conservative <inaudible> with Terry Jeffrey. Well, during the interview, this was in 2004, I think.
\nJames Bovard: I think it was April of 2005.
\nQ: Five, okay. But I went up to Pat during the break and we were talking about my mutual friend or our mutual friend, Sam Francis. But I asked Pat Buchanan to what extent he had written about or was informed about the revision of the military\u2019s unified command plan, especially the establishment of the Northern Command. And I was surprised to hear Pat say, \u201cI don\u2019t know what you\u2019re talking about.\u201d And it was not the time to go into it, but I just wanted to raise some of the issues, a lot of this is in the open, but before even the Homeland Security Department was actually set up, there was a development of the Northern Command. You know where it\u2019s at, in Colorado Springs. It\u2019s headed by a four-star admiral or a general, and the area responsibility is largely in the continental United States, some Canada and some other things.
\nBut I remember at the time when I was involved with some of these things, raising the question, \u201cWell, if you\u2019re a four-star admiral or a general and this is your area of responsibility, you\u2019ve got to have intelligence in your area of responsibility.\u201d And what are the implications of this? I mean, is our intelligence community going to be applied to doing this? But I have seen very little response from different groups. There are certainly a lot of classified things about it, you can look at the unified command plan and what NORTHCOM is, they\u2019ve made some revisions since it was first up, but Pat had no idea about it. My question to you is, are you aware of this, and have any reflections about a military command, not homeland defense?
\nJames Bovard: I know a little bit about it, but not that much. It certainly has a bad odor to it. It\u2019s the kind of thing where you don\u2019t know that the government\u2019s probably gathering up a lot of information it shouldn\u2019t be having, especially the military. But to go to your first comment on the terrorist watch list, I think the list right now is up to about 900,000 names. And again, most of them are not terrorists. And there are questions about what is the standard for putting someone on that list, and it\u2019s very likely there are a lot of people being put on that list simply because someone didn\u2019t like them. It might be getting towards the old system they had in Bucharest under Ceausescu, where it was easy for someone to finger their neighbor and make any kind of nonsense report, and all of a sudden, that person is targeted. Being on the terrorist watch list, it causes problems. If you travel, it could cause problems with your bank account. It could do a lot of things to mess up your life. And yet, aside from a handful of liberals, very few people have really put their shoulders behind this issue. But that\u2019s a great example, and I appreciate your telling us. Thanks for your courage in speaking up on that.
\nQ: I\u2019m an engineer in the space industry. And I\u2019d like to paint an even bleaker picture than you do. I work in the scientific community, not on black projects, but I know people that do. And they can\u2019t tell me what they do or they\u2019ll have to kill me, and I\u2019m here. When I talk to these people and I kind of relay my concerns to them, they look at me with an air to, hey, you know what you\u2019re talking about, but they can\u2019t say, they can\u2019t nod, their eyes tell everything. I think in my discussions with these people, all the electronic communications go through the alphabet agencies, period. So we\u2019re in a much bleaker circumstance as a country. These are people that I trust. And I\u2019m frightened of my government, and we shouldn\u2019t be. And as an individual, I don\u2019t know what to do; but hopefully– I\u2019m talking to friends and informing people– but it is almost, to me, it\u2019s like we\u2019re in a fascist regime. We\u2019re nearly like the Stasi mentality, in the East German Stasi. It\u2019s extraordinary that we\u2019ve gone this far. And I hail from Pittsburgh originally. And I remember, we had a lot of World War II vets around. And I was seven years old in my neighborhood. We had the World War II vet that befriended me. He was a really nice gentleman, kept to himself, grew a garden. He befriended me. And we got to be friends for three or four months, but he said, \u201cIf there\u2019s one thing you could do for me,\u201d he said, \u201cIt\u2019s not to give away your freedom.\u201d He said, \u201cNot to give away your freedom.\u201d He had his friends cut in half for us to be free, and we\u2019ve just handed this over. And I think a lot of people are frightened, and I think we shouldn\u2019t be.
\nJames Bovard: People need to have courage. That\u2019s a great point, don\u2019t give away your freedom. Have the courage to not bow down when the government tells you to be frightened on cue. But I\u2019m getting signs telling me to stop, so I\u2019ll draw the Curtain of Mercy here. Thanks for being such a great audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Future of Freedom Foundation\u00a0is producing transcripts from its 2007 and 2008 conferences. \u00a0Following is the text of my speech at their June 2008 conference, \u00a0\u201cRestoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy & Civil Liberties\u201d held in Reston, Virginia. \u00a0My opening bit about having lunch with Homeland Security czar Mike Chertoff and getting the scoop on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[42,20,7,184,45,198,137,667,36,164,691,662,27,249,33,666,57,14,24,30,26,162,76,279,138,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-6064","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"tag-afghanistan","8":"tag-ashcroft","9":"tag-dictatorship","10":"tag-elective-dictatorship-2","11":"tag-freedom","12":"tag-george-w-bush-2","13":"tag-george-w-bush","14":"tag-iraq","16":"tag-leviathan","18":"tag-lying","20":"tag-national-security-agency","21":"tag-patriot-act","23":"tag-police","24":"tag-rule-of-law","25":"tag-supreme-court","26":"tag-surveillance","27":"tag-terrorism","28":"tag-torture-2","29":"tag-tsa","30":"tag-tyranny-2","31":"tag-war-2","32":"tag-wiretapping"},"yoast_head":"\nMy 2008 FFF Speech: Bush's War on Civil Liberties - Transcript - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/20\/my-2008-speech-bushs-war-on-civil-liberties-transcript\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"My 2008 FFF Speech: Bush's War on Civil Liberties - Transcript - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Future of Freedom Foundation\u00a0is producing transcripts from its 2007 and 2008 conferences. \u00a0Following is the text of my speech at their June 2008 conference, \u00a0\u201cRestoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy & Civil Liberties\u201d held in Reston, Virginia. \u00a0My opening bit about having lunch with Homeland Security czar Mike Chertoff and getting the scoop on […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/20\/my-2008-speech-bushs-war-on-civil-liberties-transcript\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-08-20T20:11:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-08-20T20:31:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/ffflogo.gif\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"160\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"97\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/gif\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jim\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@jimbovard\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jim\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"47 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2013\\\/08\\\/20\\\/my-2008-speech-bushs-war-on-civil-liberties-transcript\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2013\\\/08\\\/20\\\/my-2008-speech-bushs-war-on-civil-liberties-transcript\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Jim\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/79550830ad81c14be529a2c37469974f\"},\"headline\":\"My 2008 FFF Speech: Bush’s War on Civil Liberties – Transcript\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-08-20T20:11:19+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-08-20T20:31:24+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2013\\\/08\\\/20\\\/my-2008-speech-bushs-war-on-civil-liberties-transcript\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":9406,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2013\\\/08\\\/20\\\/my-2008-speech-bushs-war-on-civil-liberties-transcript\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2013\\\/08\\\/ffflogo.gif\",\"keywords\":[\"Afghanistan\",\"Ashcroft\",\"dictatorship\",\"elective dictatorship\",\"Freedom\",\"george w. bush\",\"George W. 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