63 Documents the Government Doesn't Want You to Read - Jesse Ventura [31]
Now read the twelve-page memorandum titled “FBI Briefing on Trading” that was prepared in 2003 and declassified four years later by the 9/11 Commission. As you’ll see, the FBI went out of its way to say—more than once in the document—that no evidence existed to support such a nasty theory. Even when there were some “suspicious accounts the SEC turned over,” these were dismissed because their investigation “revealed no ties to terrorism.” You’ll even see a reference to the AIG Insurance Company in here. This document fascinated me both for what it says (certain leads that might yet be tracked down by an investigative journalist) and what it doesn’t say.
PART FIVE
THE “WAR ON TERROR”
50
SUBVERTING THE CONSTITUTION
The Justice Department’s Secret Plan
Six weeks after 9/11, Bush’s Justice Department wrote up a long memo with the subject line: “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States.” As you’ll see from the excerpts, the whole concept basically shreds our Bill of Rights. In short, “legal and constitutional rules regulating law enforcement activity are not applicable.” The military could even “attack civilian targets, such as apartment buildings, offices, or ships where suspected terrorists were thought to be.” And later, “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.”
Where does it say that, if you call something “terrorism,” the Constitution and the Bill of Rights can be made null and void? All they’ve got to do is say the word and they can put you under surveillance without a warrant. To me, this smacks of an attack on the foundations of democracy that plays right into the hands of terrorists. It also sets a precedent for the kinds of tactics we went on to see at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and elsewhere.
51
NO MORE RULE OF LAW
President Bush’s Justification for Torture
A few months after September 11, President Bush sent out a “mass memo” that lays out why the al Qaeda and Taliban detainees were “unlawful combatants” and so the Geneva Convention calling for humane treatment of POWs did not apply to them. Well, if they’re not covered by an international agreement, shouldn’t they be covered by the laws of the United States and our Constitution and Bill of Rights? My point being, this situation has to fall under somebody’s law. How they can come up with this limbo, inbetween, “make up your own rules” idea is beyond belief. But I guess that’s why you have lawyers, because every lawyer reads the law differently.
52
NO FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
The Military’s Astounding “Media Ground Rules” for Guantanamo
Talk about infringement on the freedom of the press! When I came across these Media Ground Rules that had to be signed off on before anyone can gain access to where the detainees are being held at Guantanamo, I was shocked. By the time you memorized all these rules-and-regulations, you’d be so uptight you squeaked. What “policy?” This is the biggest snow job I’ve ever seen. If the media has to follow those rules, they’re not even allowed to ask a question. The Guantanamo brass could have saved all that paper by taking one big sheet and stamping in large letters: MEDIA NOT ALLOWED.
I would have loved to adopt that identical policy when I was governor of Minnesota, with what I used to call “the Minnesota jackals.” Let me put those rules up right outside the governor’s reception room where the media comes in, all those pages as to what you have to abide by. How would that have gone over?
So forget about providing the public any insight into what’s really going on behind the gates of our Naval Station. Which, as you’ll see in the documents that follow, was enough to raise the hair on the back of anyone’s head. (Presuming the head was still intact.)
53 & 54
TORTURE TECHNIQUES
The Detainees at Guantanamo
We all saw the horrendous photos and videos from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Not as well known are the Department of Defense’s “Counter-Resistance Strategies” for