Category: Military State

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 10, 2014

On Sunday, we reach for humor and less seriousness, but lately, the cartoons aren’t funny, they tend toward the ironic, or are downright scary. Maybe that is understandable, since we are back in Iraq. ISIS is now as bad as or worse, than Al-Qadea, which might be good news for the Wrongologist’s defense stocks!

Why is the Iraqi government outgunned by a rogue group of thugs?

Anyone?…Bueller?

Expanding “Arabia” to the wider Islamic world, we Americans have been on very sandy ground, from Kabul to Baghdad to Benghazi. And, like quicksand, we can’t escape:
• We’re working with Iran in Iraq, but against them in Israel and in Syria
• Iran is working with Palestinians in Israel, but against them in Syria
• Turkey a member of NATO, supports Hamas against Israel, but is against Assad

Nations in the Middle East are frequently allies on one front and enemies on the other. Somewhere in that paradox is the solution. Now that we are out of Afghanistan, will we have to fight the new terror group of the month, or the new terror group of the year? Can we be the police department to the world, yet keep our social contract and our domestic freedoms intact?

Military recruiters are about the same the world over:

COW alqaeda
T.E. Lawrence – Britain’s “Lawrence of Arabia”, warned that Arabia is not a hospitable place:

COW Lawrence

Iraq didn’t stop being a cesspool when we left;

COW Intermission

Reingagement is a tough equation to solve:

COW Reingagement

In other news, the leaders of Africa came to DC to hear our new pitch:

COW Africa
Finally, Jim Brady died this week. The Wrongologist’s company was a vendor to the Brady Center, and played a very small part in building public support for the Brady Bill:

COW Brady

 

 

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John Brennan: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Following up on yesterday’s post about the corrosive impact of an out-of-control National Intelligence State, you may have missed that on July 7th, Bloomberg reported that Germany asked our CIA Head of Station to leave the country. From Bloomberg:

The expulsion, described as “an extraordinary event” by a German Foreign Ministry spokesman, reflects Chancellor Angela Merkel’s frustration about US spying on one of its most important allies and the political risk of growing mistrust of American intentions among the German public.

Bloomberg called Germany’s action the lowest point in relations with the US since Edward Snowden revealed extensive surveillance activities by the US, including the alleged hacking of Merkel’s mobile phone. Lawmakers and officials in Merkel’s governing coalition urged the Obama Administration to come clean on German surveillance and make a no-spying pledge. The US has made it clear that isn’t on the table.

Pressure on Merkel grew after an alleged American double agent was found in Germany’s foreign-intelligence service, known as BND. According to Spiegel Online: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

[The spy] had already been working for an American intelligence agency for two years. That relationship had…begun with an email, which he had sent to the US Embassy in Berlin, he explained. [He] talked about clandestine meetings in Austria, at which he had allegedly been paid a total of €25,000 ($34,000).

Bloomberg quoted Wolfgang Bosbach, a lawmaker in Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party:

The US still hasn’t grasped what a burden this case is for the German-American relationship…Germany cannot tolerate espionage activity on its soil.

America came to this realization too late. Bloomberg reported that on July 9th, US Ambassador to Germany, John Emerson, went to the German Foreign Ministry with a Washington-authorized offer to provide Germany a US intelligence-sharing agreement resembling the “5 Eyes” relationship available only to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. The goal was to assuage Merkel and prevent the expulsion of the Central Intelligence Agency’s station chief in Berlin.

But, that same morning, Merkel convened her top ministers and decided to ask the US intelligence chief to leave Germany. Merkel said:

We don’t live in the Cold War anymore, where everybody probably mistrusted everybody else… The notion that you always have to ask yourself…whether the one sitting across from you could be working for the others, that’s not a basis for trust…So we obviously have different perceptions and we have to discuss that intensively.

In addition to Ambassador Emerson’s efforts, Bloomberg reported that CIA Director John Brennan contacted Germany’s intelligence chief prior to the CIA official being asked to leave. He offered to visit Berlin to help resolve the dispute. But, Brennan’s offer was perceived in Berlin as too little, too late. The Germans had moved beyond a symbolic visit.

It wasn’t always this way. Before the current tensions, the US and Germany had a history of extensive intelligence cooperation. For many years, much of US electronic spying on Iran was conducted out of a CIA station in Frankfurt known as Tefran.

Now we have a big repair job on our hands, precisely when we need the German government to work closely with us on Ukraine and the Middle East.

Nicely played, US Security State! This conflict with Germany underscores the opinion that US intelligence agencies lack a good risk-assessment model, one that judges the benefits of operations directed at friendly powers against the potential risks that can come from those operations.

In the LA Times, Jacob Heilbrun said:

If Obama is unable to rein in spying of Germany, he may discover that he is helping to convert it from an ally into an adversary. For Obama to say Auf Wiedersehen to a longtime ally would deliver a blow to American national security that no amount of secret information could possibly justify.

And on the same date, Spiegel Online’s lead article was: “Germany’s Choice: Will It Be America or Russia?” Europeans in general, and Chancellor Merkel specifically, are examining how (or if) they can survive geopolitically without the US. And for Germany, and possibly others in Europe, this could push them into the logical alternative, a European tent that includes Russia.

Mr. Putin’s grand plan has been to separate Germany from the US. Yet, even in light of knowing Putin’s strategy, we still alienate Germany. This makes one ask: Who is in charge of our geopolitical strategy? Brennan, or Obama? Can anybody in DC play this game? Is it wrong to ask: How about firing Brennan over screwing up our relationship with Germany?

Mr. Brennan may be thinking of this exchange between Lady Clementine Churchill and French General Charles De Gaulle on December 9, 1967:

Clementine Churchill:

General, you must not hate your friends more than you hate your enemies

De Gaulle (in English):

France has no friends, only interests

Sadly, both De Gaulle and Brennan have been proven wrong. Germany will move us from the “friend” to the “interest” column.

Let’s hope we don’t need them to do something that only a friend would do.

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Our 4th Branch of Government

Everyone knows our government has 3 branches; the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial. That’s basic high school civics. But, it’s no longer true. The US government now seems to have a 4th branch: The national security apparatus, which has unfathomable power and reach.

From Tom Engelhard: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

New efforts at “reforms” will, at best, only modestly impede the powers of this [security] state within a state. Generally speaking, its powers and prerogatives remain beyond constraint by our judicial branch of government. It is deferred to with remarkable frequency by the executive branch and, with the rarest of exceptions, it has been supported handsomely with much obeisance and few doubts by Congress.

The national security apparatus is unelected. After last week’s mea culpa by Mr. Obama, apparently it has also moved beyond our Constitutional rules of checks and balances. You may recall that a report to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) on the CIA’s Rendition/Detention/Interrogation (RDI) program, was held up by the CIA. Along the way, we learned that the CIA was improperly spying on the SSCI.

In March, CIA Director John Brennan said spying on the Senate was outside the realm of possibility, claiming:

As far as the allegations of, you know, CIA hacking into, you know, Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, we wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s — that’s just beyond the — you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would do.

Now we learn they did exactly that. The CIA Inspector General has found that:

CIA employees improperly accessed computers used by the Senate Intelligence Committee to compile a report on the agency’s now defunct detention and interrogation program,

On August 1st, the administration defended the CIA and Brennan’s actions. But Brennan DID obstruct the investigation, he leveled false charges at the Senate Intelligence Committee staff, filed those charges with Department of Justice, and then oversaw the process of redacting the damning CIA report.

From the Booman Tribune:

By any normal standard, John Brennan would be prosecuted for his actions. But he is being protected by the administration. I don’t think this is best explained by the idea that Brennan is doing a good job in other respects. He’s a major embarrassment to the administration and protecting him makes them look extremely bad. From the very beginning of his administration, I think President Obama has simply been afraid to take on the Intelligence Community.

And remember Mr. Obama’s rationale:

…we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values. I understand why it happened…there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this. And, you know, it’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. A lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots…

He has clearly taken a side and it’s not that of transparency, or the Constitution. Or, do we live in a country where the President works at the direction of the head of the CIA?

Alternative Obama: If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a dozen times, look forward, because if you look backward you’re going to learn from history and then how are we ever going to continue weakening your Constitution?

Alternative Alternative Obama: John Brennan has a gun to my head. Keeps reminding me of how much my Presidency looks like that of JFK. Worries about my safety…

That might explain his lack of political courage, but, political courage is exactly what is required if we are to get off the self-destructive path this country is walking. Sadly, we aren’t seeing that. Too many are scared that they might lose their jobs if the boss saw their political action. Too many are flummoxed by how easily Congress can be co-opted by money. Too many in our media are giving right-wing politicians a pass because it’s clear that they won’t change.

There’s no excuse for the people who tortured or, who lied to Congress, even if they were under ‘enormous pressure’. They knew the difference between right and wrong. And the fact that John Kiriakou is in prison for revealing that the US tortured, while Cofer Black, David Addington, John Yoo, John Brennan and Jose Rodriquez, all of whom played a role in the torture program roam free, shows that our political elite’s ethics are upside-down.

Holding individuals, particularly direct actors (like torturers) and advisers who engineered the torture program accountable before the law would not destroy the effectiveness of the CIA or the security state. Those who violated the law should be prosecuted. But those who did not violate the law should be free to conduct operations on behalf of the US. They shouldn’t be made to feel that they are weakened or wronged.

In response to the related question that often arises: “What? Do you want the CIA to be looking over its shoulder or consulting a lawyer every time it needs to get something done? The answer is: “Of course”.

We should expect nothing less than that from every elected official from the President down to local mayors, police chiefs and commissioners. Particularly from those who have the statutory authority to harm others.

It is difficult to imagine today that what sounded like poetry at the first Obama inauguration is now mockery. Sadly, it’s not about unfulfilled expectations of more hopeful things; we understand the political dynamic at work in Washington. It is that among his “achievements” has been the further weakening of our constitutional rights through his compliant treatment of the emergent 4th branch of government.

 

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Remember the Gulf of Tonkin Incident?

August 4th is the 50th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, an event that led to Congress giving President Johnson the legal authorization to begin the Vietnam War. On August 2, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox exchanged fire with three North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. Two days later, the Maddox fired on radar targets, which it reported had launched torpedoes at the Maddox.

And on August 10th, Congress passed a joint resolution giving the president the use of “conventional” military force against North Vietnam.

Why should we remember the Gulf of Tonkin? Because the Iraq War wasn’t the first time we went to war where the intelligence and facts were fixed to conform to the policy. Jessica Desvarieux of the Real News Network interviews Daniel Ellsberg about his experience with the decision-making about the Gulf of Tonkin incident:

For those who don’t remember the Vietnam Era, Daniel Ellsberg was the Edward Snowden of his time. Ellsberg was physically present when the Gulf of Tonkin “facts” were “fixed” to conform to Vietnam policy. Daniel Ellsberg was a highly placed adviser in the Pentagon. He had been a Marine officer, assigned to a ship in the Suez Canal during the Suez Crisis in 1956. Starting in 1964, he worked in the Pentagon for McNamara, and starting in 1967, served 2 years in Vietnam as a civilian working for the State Department. Here is part of what Ellsberg says in the video: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

…my boss–the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, John McNaughton–[was] with McNamara in his office on the morning of August 4, when I came into the office at 9 o’clock they were actually already planning the possible response to an attack…because of indications that the commodore on the spot…thought that he was being shadowed for a possible ambush…a courier rushed in…with a flash cable saying that Commodore Herrick on the patrol in the South China Sea…was under attack at that very moment, that there was a torpedo coming at him, he was taking evasive action…

More from Ellsberg: (brackets and emphasis by the Wrongologist)

…at about 1:30, while…McNamara…was over at the White House, and I think McNaughton was with him, conferring with the president on the exact nature of the retaliation, [in] comes a very dramatic table from Commodore Herrick saying, hold everything…All the torpedo reports except the first one are now suspect and, it turned out, he said, were reports of an overeager sonar man who was mistaking the beat of the ship’s propeller against the wake as they took evasive action, circled in the water. That was being mistaken for incoming torpedoes…

And Ellsberg tells us that the ship’s captain ultimately reported 21 torpedoes. He goes on to say that all but one were false reports, and that the captain said many years later that he was also wrong about the first torpedo: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Now, I took it for granted that anything I was seeing was, of course, also available to the president and to McNamara…So I assumed that they were quite well aware that there was a good deal of uncertainty about what had happened. The commodore at the time, Herrick, did say that there was one torpedo, but one had to take that with a good deal of salt, because he had been just as certain about the next 20 torpedoes, and it really took him many years before, looking at the evidence, he finally acknowledged that he had been mistaken about the first one as well. But even on that night, we knew that what the president proceeded to say and what McNamara proceeded to say to the press in television interviews, that the attack was unequivocal, we knew that that was false…

Just like years later, when it turned out that the assertions by Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush that they had unequivocal evidence of WMDs in Iraq, their evidence was at best, equivocal. Later, we learned it was false.

Just as there were no torpedoes in the Tonkin Gulf, there were no WMDs in Iraq.

Just like Johnson and McNamara got a blank check for war with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Rumsfeld and Bush got the Iraq Resolution, essentially a predated declaration of war given by the Congress to the president, in violation of the Constitution. We can go back further: the USA always has a pretext for war; remember the Maine! The patterns and degree of deception from Vietnam to Iraq appear to be eerily similar.

Add to that, whatever caused the downing of MH17 is not clear cut and unequivocal either. The US says it has evidence, but it has not provided that evidence to us. It is shrouded in mystery, doubt and propaganda, just as the supposed WMDs in Iraq, the Syrian government gas attacks, what started the latest Gaza/Israeli war, and many other incidents.

It is useful to add more skepticism into the current geopolitical climate. Today’s average Congressional staffer can remember GWB and WMDs, since they were 18-20 years old when that happened, while Vietnam is ancient history to them.

Both wars were started with a lie, but the equally big lie was that when the promoters got their wars, they were smart enough to know that neither war could actually be won.

So, who benefited?

And who will benefit if we engage again in Iraq? If we engage more deeply in Ukraine, or in Syria, or in Gaza?

Hint: It isn’t “freedom”.

 

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Military Sales Complicate Our Middle East Strategy

The Hill quotes President Obama’s impromptu press conference on July 16:

We live in a complex world and at a challenging time…And none of these challenges lend themselves to quick or easy solutions, but all of them require American leadership. And as commander in chief, I’m confident that, if we stay patient and determined, that we will, in fact, meet these challenges.

Of course it is a complex time. But we make our lives much more complicated by the arms deals we make with other countries. In the last three years, the US has provided tens of billions of dollars in military weapons through Foreign Military Sales (FMS) to the United Arab Emirates (UAE); Qatar; Kuwait; and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).

Some are designed to protect against airborne missile retaliation and air attacks. For example, the US supplied Qatar ($9.9 billion), Kuwait ($4.2 billion), and UAE ($1.1 billion) with Patriot anti-missile systems and UAE also acquired a $6.5 billion theater anti-air defense (THAAD) system. The US also sold KSA $6.7 billion worth of KC-130 aerial refueling tankers, the UAE $4 billion and KSA $6.8 billion of munitions including “bunker buster bombs,” typically used to attack hardened targets like nuclear facilities (are you listening Iran?). Qatar received a $1.2 billion early warning radar; KSA $1.3 billion for 30 patrol boats for use in the Gulf of Hormuz; Qatar spent $3 billion on Apache attack helicopters used for special operations insertions. The list also includes Javelin missiles, F-18’s and F-16’s, and Sidewinder anti-air missiles.

Israel is the largest recipient of US Foreign Military Financing (FMF). For FY 2015, the President’s request for Israel adds up to about 55% of our global FMF funding. Annual FMF grants to Israel represent about 25% of the overall Israeli defense budget. We also agreed to sell Israel 19 F-35s in 2010, with options to increase that order to 75 planes. We have recently approved the only foreign sale of the V-22 Tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft to the Israelis for $3 billion.

Business Insider reports that we may have made our lives more complicated by weapons sales to Qatar. You probably are not aware that Qatar is one of Hamas’s reliable international partners:

Last week, Qatar closed the largest sale of American weaponry so far this year, purchasing $11 billion worth of Patriot missile batteries and Apache attack helicopters. The sale revealed that Qatar hasn’t exactly been lacking in strategic daring in the wake of its failed bet on Muslim Brotherhood-linked political movements throughout the Middle East.

Qatar is about the size of Connecticut. It has fewer than 300,000 citizens. The rest of its 2.1 million inhabitants are expatriates and foreign workers. Why does it need all these weapons?

The Israeli-Hamas fight shines a light on Qatar. The New York Times reported on the Qatari Emir’s 2012 visit to Hamas-controlled Gaza:

The emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, pledged $400 million to build two housing complexes, rehabilitate three main roads and create a prosthetic center, among other projects, a transformational infusion of cash at a time when foreign aid to the Palestinian territories has been in free fall.

He was the first-ever leader of a country to meet with Hamas in Gaza. Business Insider quotes Jonathan Schanzer, the vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who said that Qatar is “believed to be the primary financier of Hamas,” which has estimated annual operating expenses of around $1 billion. In June, Qatar attempted to transfer money for long-unpaid civil service salaries for Gaza-based Hamas members through the Arab Bank, a transaction that the Bank disallowed after apparent US pressure.

Qatar is arguably a counter-productive actor in the context of the biggest Israeli-Palestinian crisis since the Second Intifada of a decade ago. Business Insider reports that David Weinberg, a scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that Congress hasn’t been concerned enough with Qatar’s policies to put a hold on weapons sales, and it confirmed the Obama administration’s recent nominee as ambassador to Doha without controversy:

It’s not clear whether Congress has the stomach for a fight over these issues with an ostensible ally when…the administration seems to be vouching for Qatari conduct.

Yes, we vouch for conduct we can’t control, or in some cases, really influence. Why is it that the first thing our lawmakers think of is “send them more arms”?

The powder keg of the Middle East has been filled in part by our policymakers’ conflicted views of Middle East politics, but largely by the political influence of America’s military contractors.

Thanks to our Congress and President, it waits only for another spark to set it off. If and when that happens, count on someone in the administration or in Congress saying: “who could have anticipated THAT happening?”

 

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Are We the People Becoming “We the Enemy”?

What’s Wrong Today:

“Either you are with us, or you are with the people.” That could be a quote from some government spy involved in domestic surveillance in the not-too-distant future.

In 1975, Sen. Frank Church, (D-ID) chaired the Senate committee that investigated illegal intelligence gathering activities by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In theory, prior to 9/11, only the FBI was able to conduct domestic surveillance.

Today, we know about the NSA’s role in domestic spying. In the post-9/11 world, the NSA has made all the new rules. The new rules it brought into existence are simple enough: Whoever you are and wherever you live, you are a potential target. No one is exempt from surveillance.

But the NSA is not alone.

The Pentagon is looking into how to deal with civil unrest in the US. Launched in 2008, the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) Minerva Research Initiative partners with universities to improve DoD’s basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US.

The Guardian reports that last year, the Minerva Initiative funded a project to determine ‘Who Does Not Become a Terrorist, and Why?’ The report conflates peaceful activists with “supporters of political violence”, who it sees as different from terrorists only in that they do not embark on “armed militancy” themselves. In 2013, Minerva funded a University of Maryland project in collaboration with the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to gauge the risk of civil unrest due to climate change. The project is developing models to anticipate what could happen to societies under a range of potential climate change scenarios.

The Guardian also said that independent scholars are critical of the US government’s efforts to militarize social science in the service of war. In May 2008, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) wrote to the US government noting that the Pentagon lacks “the kind of infrastructure for evaluating anthropological [and other social science] research” in a way that involves “rigorous, balanced and objective peer review”. The AAA called for such research to be managed instead by civilian agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Dr. David Price, a cultural anthropologist at St Martin’s University in Washington DC, has previously exposed how the Pentagon’s Human Terrain System (HTS) program, which was designed to embed social scientists in military field operations, routinely conducted training scenarios set in regions within the United States. Price reported that the HTS training scenarios “adapted COIN (counterinsurgency) for Afghanistan/Iraq” to domestic situations:

…in the USA where the local population was seen from the military perspective, as threatening the established balance of power and influence, and challenging law and order

Price identified a war game aimed at environmental activists protesting pollution from a coal-fired plant in Missouri. Some of the protesters were members of the Sierra Club. War game participants were tasked to “identify those who were ‘problem-solvers’ and those who were ‘problem-causers‘.” Next, they identified the rest of the population who could be the target of propaganda operations designed to move their “Center of Gravity” towards a set of viewpoints which were the ‘desired end-state’ of the military’s strategy.
Should we be viewing Minerva as a prime example of military ideology? Clearly, security agencies have no qualms about painting the rest of us as potential terrorists.

Here’s more: There is a lawsuit against alleged domestic US military spying, called Panagacos vs. Towery, in the US District Court in Tacoma, WA. It was filed against the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and local law enforcement agencies in 2010, after it was discovered that an activist called “John Jacob” was actually Army intelligence agent John J. Towery from nearby Fort Lewis. Towery spied on and infiltrated the antiwar group Port Militarization Resistance (PMR), which blocked military shipments en route to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007. It also accuses the cities of Olympia and Tacoma of coordinating with the US military to violate the First and Fourth Amendment rights of activists.

So, our military is engaged in domestic COINTELPRO (COunter INtelligence PROgrams). This also happened during the Vietnam War years. Back then, the CIA’s COINTELPRO used “boots on the ground” to neutralize the millions of anti-Vietnam War activists. Martin Luther King, Jr. was under 24/7 surveillance by the 111th Military Intelligence Group, in 1968.

Maybe we need to be paranoid, since republics can fall when they are undermined by their military establishment. Today, US has a mixture of extreme religiosity, ideological conflict in a polarized society, and a militarist culture in which soldiers (now called “warriors””) are worshiped.

This is a toxic brew. Fusion Centers, NSA spying, militarized police forces, criminalization of poverty, erosion of free speech, and now, war gaming against the American public, these are the actions of a fearful American power elite. We have a huge gap between the rich and poor, many areas are deeply racist, the last civil war still rankles with the descendants of some of the losers, and many citizens are armed to the teeth.

Think about this quote from Frederick Douglass:

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

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Transparency: OK for You, Not for Me

What’s Wrong Today:

Sometimes, good intentions get lost. Organizational rules and government laws are established with good intentions, and later, get watered down. We call this the “except me” option. The rules apply to everyone, except me, my company, my church, my political party.

Today let’s look at three examples of organizations saying the rules do not apply to them. The premise of Federal and state Freedom of Information Act laws is that government records should be open to the public, and their information subject to public review.

First, the Red Cross: Barry Ritholtz at Bloomberg warns us that the Red Cross doesn’t want you to know how they spend their money. The Red Cross is using a “trade secrets” exception as a pretext for hiding much of their activities. The story began with an article by Pro Publica about donations to the Red Cross for Superstorm Sandy, and what happened to the money:

Following Superstorm Sandy, donors gave $312 million to the American Red Cross. How did the aid organization spend that money? A year and a half after the storm, it’s surprisingly difficult to get a detailed answer

Pro Publica tried to get answers by filing a request with the State of New York for the information. They were rebuffed:

Just how badly [did] the American Red Cross want to keep secret how it raised and spent over $300 million after Hurricane Sandy? The charity…hired a fancy law firm (Gibson Dunn) to fight a public request we filed with New York State, arguing that information about its Sandy activities is a ‘trade secret’

That’s right, when asked where the money went, the Red Cross lawyered up. Isn’t it hard to believe that how a charity spends its money could be a trade secret? Yet, the Red Cross’ “trade secret” argument persuaded NY State to withhold the information. From Yves Smith: (brackets and emphasis by the Wrongologist)

The…New York State Attorney General [is] helping the Red Cross shroud its activities. Admittedly, Schneiderman has taken up an investigation of the Red Cross. However, when ProPublica tried to obtain a copy of the information that the charity sent to the Attorney General, the Red Cross’ law firm, Gibson Dunn, insisted that much of the material provided was a trade secret and thus not subject to disclosure under New York’s version of FOIA, the Freedom of Information Law, or FOIL

ProPublica published Schneiderman’s response. It shows how absurd some of Gibson Dunn’s arguments were. For instance, the charity wanted the second line of a two line title redacted. The first line was “American Red Cross.” What could the second line possibly be that Gibson Dunn would contend that it deserved secret status? The name of a legal entity? Why does the Red Cross need trade secrets? They are supposedly, not for profit. Why would they need “business strategies” when they are not a business?

Next, as police departments across the US militarize, a former good idea is now being used for a bad reason. The good part was the formation of Law Enforcement Councils (LECs), made up of various municipal police departments in a state or region. When these LECs were set up, the idea was to exchange information about policing techniques and to provide back-up when incidents on the ground exceeded a given town’s resources.

The bad part: The WaPo reports on how police departments use their LECs, often incorporated as 501 (c) (3) organizations, to avoid providing information on its SWAT team activities. These LECs exist throughout the US. As part of the ACLU’s recent report on police militarization, the Massachusetts chapter of the ACLU sent open records requests to SWAT teams across Massachusetts. It was told that the SWAT teams were part of a private company that was not subject to the Massachusetts public records law. From the WaPo: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

According to the ACLU, the LECs are claiming that their 501(c) (3) status means that they’re private corporations, not government agencies. And therefore, they say they’re immune from open records requests

These agencies oversee police activities. They employ cops who carry guns, wear badges, collect paychecks provided by taxpayers and have the power to detain, arrest, injure and kill. They operate SWAT teams. But in Massachusetts, they say that because they’re incorporated, they’re immune to Massachusetts open records laws. 240 of the 351 police departments in Massachusetts belong to an LEC. While LECs are legally “corporations,” they are funded by local and federal taxpayer money, and are composed exclusively of public police officers. Jessie Rossman, an attorney for the Massachusetts ACLU:

You can’t have it both ways…The same government authority that allows them to carry weapons, make arrests, and break down the doors of Massachusetts residents during dangerous raids also makes them a government agency that is subject to the open records law

Massachusetts residents aren’t permitted to know how often the SWAT teams are used, what they’re used for, what sort of training they get or who they’re primarily used against. Sound OK to you?

It is like a circular firing squad – as more and more Americans arm themselves with automatic weapons, the police see this as a reason why they need more and better military-grade weapons. And more secrecy.

Finally, our Congress at work: The National Journal reports that Congress decided to stop reporting Members’ trips that are paid for by private parties:

It’s going to be a little more difficult to ferret out which members of Congress are lavished with all-expenses-paid trips around the world after the House has quietly stripped away the requirement that such privately sponsored travel be included on lawmakers’ annual financial-disclosure forms

The move, made behind closed doors and without a public announcement by the House Ethics Committee, reverses more than three decades of precedent. Gifts of free travel to lawmakers have appeared on a Member’s yearly financial form dating back to the late 1970s, after the Watergate scandal. National Journal uncovered the deleted disclosure requirement when analyzing the most recent batch of yearly filings. They quote Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington:

This is such an obvious effort to avoid accountability…There’s no legitimate reason for it

Free trips paid for by private groups must still be reported separately to the House’s Office of the Clerk and disclosed there. But they will now be absent from the chief document that reporters, watchdogs, and members of the public have used for decades to scrutinize lawmakers’ finances. Last year, members of Congress and their aides took more free trips than in any year since the influence-peddling scandal that sent lobbyist Jack Abramoff to prison. There were nearly 1,900 trips at a cost of more than $6 million last year, according to Legistorm, which compiles travel records.

Now, none of those trips must be included on the annual disclosures of lawmakers or their aides.

There you have it: 3 examples of smart people, all ‘sponsored’ in whole or in part by we the people, who believe that the rules shouldn’t apply to them. These organizations are reducing transparency at a time when trust in public entities is at or near all-time lows, despite rules or laws on the books that argue against the very loopholes they say they need.

What about you and me is so scary to the Red Cross, the Massachusetts police, and Congress?

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Swat the Growth in SWAT Teams

What’s Wrong Today:

Over the last several decades, America’s police forces have increasingly come to resemble ground troops. This all became clear to us with the response after the Boston Marathon bombing. Tank-like vehicles, armored-up cops, helicopters were all part of the man hunt. There was a picture in the Boston Globe during the Marathon Bombing showing two police officers side by side. They both had identical helmets, flak jackets and weapons.  One had a big patch on his back
that said “MASSACHUSETTS STATE POLICE.” Another officer next to him, his patch said “BOSTON POLICE.” 

Today’s policemen are a far cry from the cops of the 1950’s. The 1960s brought about the invention of the SWAT unit—which in turn led to the debut of military tactics
in the ranks of police officers. Nixon’s War on Drugs, Reagan’s War on Poverty, the post–9/11 security state under Bush and Obama: By degrees, each of these innovations expanded and empowered police forces, sometimes at the expense of civil liberties.

From the Huffington Post:

Today in America, SWAT teams are deployed about 100 to 150 times per day, or about 50,000 times per year — a dramatic increase from the 3,000 or so annual deployments in the early 1980s, or the few hundred in the 1970s. The vast majority of today’s deployments are to serve search warrants for drug crimes. 

Where these teams were once used only in emergency situations, they’re now also used as an investigative tool against people merely suspected of crimes. In many police
agencies, paramilitary tactics have become the first option, where they once were the last. The police now use overwhelming force.  Even when arresting a drunk, they use multiple cars.  After the Boston bombing they had large
numbers of police just stand around as a part of “confidence building” and to “deter” the bombers. And the
military tools are supplied by the federal government and the taxpayers. The Pentagon’s 1033 program, started in 1997, gives surplus military equipment to local police agencies. Millions of pieces of equipment have since been given
away, some $500 million worth in 2011 alone.

Once they get the gear, police agencies even in tiny towns have used it to start SWAT teams.

The Department of Homeland Security has a program that cuts checks to police departments via federal grants specifically tied to drug policing and asset
forfeiture policies. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the DHS has handed out some $34 billion in grants to police departments across
the country, many for the purchase of battle-grade vehicles and weapons. This program has created a cottage industry of companies who make militarized equipment and take checks from local towns in exchange for guns, tanks and
armored vehicles.

These DHS grants dwarf the 1033 program. At the end of 2011, the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) found that some defense contractors that had previously served the Pentagon, have since shifted their focus to police departments, hoping to tap a new homeland security market
bounty expected to be worth $19 billion annually by 2014. Police agencies have a whole new source of funding for their military gear. Elsewhere, CIR found that:

  • In Augusta, Maine, with fewer than 20,000 people and where an officer hasn’t died from gunfire in the line of duty in more than 125 years, police bought eight $1,500 tactical vests
  • In Des Moines, Iowa police bought two $180,000 bomb-disarming robots
  • In Arizona, a sheriff is now the proud owner of a surplus Army tank
  • In Montgomery County, Texas, the sheriff’s department owns a $300,000 pilotless
    surveillance drone

A couple months before the CIR report, the Montgomery County department made headlines when its DHS-funded drone accidentally crashed into its DHS-funded BEARCAT, which stands for “Ballistic Engineered
Armored Response Counter Attack Truck”; in other words, an armored personnel carrier.

In effect, the DHS and Pentagon programs have given rise to a police industrial complex. Concord, NH applied
for a $258,000 Federal grant for a BEARCAT. According to the Concord Monitor, the matter is before the city council, and there is significant local opposition to the acquisition, mostly based on the potential for militarization of the police force. Dozens of people testified against the BEARCAT. Some people held signs saying, “More Mayberry less Fallujah”.

Nashville BEARCAT

The question is that these grants are supposed to be for the purpose of preventing terrorism; they are not supposed
to be about making a police officer safer while executing search warrants, standing by at protests, or other things like that. Note that there’s also a Bearcat just up the road from Concord in Manchester ,so can’t they save a few bucks and just share?

What’s happening here is that we’re building a domestic irregular military. Why? The last time more than 10 terrorists were in the same place at one time in America was on
September 11, and all the BEARCATS and SWAT teams in the country wouldn’t have prevented it, and wouldn’t have helped anyone at ground zero.

What’s happening is a pre-staging of gear and equipment: And its standardized vehicles and standardized equipment. These units can now be deployed anywhere in the country for “missions”, because the equipment and training of each unit is increasingly identical, rather like plug-and-play. The tendency, encouraged by the DHS and Federal grant money, is for all police units across the country to become interchangeable — the only differences will be their uniform patches and the jurisdiction stenciled on the flak jackets.

OK, that may be a bridge too far. To say that the
police are militarized is not the same as saying they’re becoming a Domestic Military, although the claims are related.

The federal government has an obvious and legitimate interest in protecting the country from terrorist attacks. So at least in theory, anti-terror grants to domestic police agencies might make sense. But what are these grants doing to
prevent terrorism?

The best way to stop overzealous law enforcement agencies is with good oversight of their actions.

  • We need elected public oversight committees that deal with government actions
  • We need to hold government accountable for its actions and require them to justify
    their actions
  • We need to make them follow the law

We can’t allow a confiscating entity like a local police department, or state agency, or the Drug Enforcement Agency to reap any financial gain from their actions. We must eliminate self serving actions taken only for self serving or financial gain.

We can’t allow local, state or federal government entities to hide behind bad (security or secret) laws.

We must make the government abide by the Constitution without exception.

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.  -James Madison

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