Nelson Mandela. Free at last.

[Magda Hassan]

Mandela and Gaddafi: The Myth of the Saint and the Mad Dog

By Linda Housman

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January 05, 2014 "Information Clearing House - "Question. Why was Mandela's life celebrated by the world while Gaddafi after everything he did for Africa was gunned down like a dog?", a Twitter user wondered days after Nelson Mandela's passing.

This question becomes even more valid in light of what the mainstream media, in the wake of the former South African president's death, have been anxiously hiding from the public: the actual close and crucial alliance between Mandela and Gaddafi. Back in the 70s and 80s, when the West refused to allow sanctions against Apartheid in South Africa and used to call Mandela a terrorist, it was none other than Libya's Muammar Gaddafi who kept supporting him. Gaddafi funded Mandela's fight against Apartheid by training ANC fighters and by paying for their education abroad, and their bond only became stronger after Mandela's release from prison on February 11, 1990.

Nevertheless, one of them ended up being "gunned down like a dog" and his death was celebrated by the entire elite of the imperialist world, which celebrations were significantly summarized by Hillary "Warzone" Clinton in a now infamous interview in which she exults: "We came, we saw, he died!"

As for the other one, the same entire elite of the imperialist world crowded into the FNB stadium in Soweto, South Africa, to attend the funeral of their hero, and to verbosely praise Mandela and his achievements with all possible superlatives.

Mandela on Gaddafi

So how did the branded Saint Mandela really feel about the branded Mad Dog Gaddafi? Let's hear straight from the horse's mouth what the mainstream media have left out of their laudatory picture of the former ANC leader.

Right upon his release from prison, after more than 27 years behind bars, Mandela broke the UN embargo and paid a visit to the Libyan capital of Tripoli, where he declared: "My delegation and I are overjoyed with the invitation from the Brother Guide [Muammar Gaddafi], to visit the Great Popular and Socialist Arab Libyan Jamahiriya. I have been waiting impatiently ever since we received the invitation. I would like to remind you that the first time I came here, in 1962, the country was in a very different state of affairs. One could not but be struck by the sights of poverty from the moment of arrival, with all of its usual corollaries: hunger, illness, lack of housing and of health-care facilities, etc. Anger and revolt could be read in those days on the faces of everyone.

Since then, things have changed considerably. During our stay in prison, we read and heard a great deal about the changes which have come about in this country and about blossoming of the economy which has been experienced here. There is prosperity and progress everywhere here today which we were able to see even before the airplane touched ground. It is thus with great pleasure that we have come on a visit in the Jamahiriya, impatient to meet our brother, the Guide Gaddafi."

When Mandela was taken to the ruins of Gaddafi's compound in Tripoli, which was bombed by the Reagan administration in 1986 in an attempt to murder the entire Gaddafi family, he said:

"No country can claim to be the policeman of the world and no state can dictate to another what it should do. Those that yesterday were friends of our enemies have the gall today to tell me not to visit my brother Gaddafi. They are advising us to be ungrateful and forget our friends of the past."

In response, Gaddafi thanked Mandela for his friendship, saying: "Who would ever have said that one day the opportunity for us to meet would become reality. We would like you to know that we are constantly celebrating your fight and that of the South African people, and that we salute your courage during all of those long years you spent in detention in the prison of Apartheid. Not a single day has passed without us having thought of you and your sufferings."

Eight years later, when then U.S. president Bill Clinton visited Mandela in March 1998, Clinton criticized the South African president's meeting with Muammar Gaddafi. In reaction to that criticism, Mandela straightforwardly replied:

"I have also invited Brother Leader Gaddafi to this country. And I do that because our moral authority dictates that we should not abandon those who helped us in the darkest hour in the history of this country. Not only did the Libyans support us in return, they gave us the resources for us to conduct our struggle, and to win. And those South Africans who have berated me for being loyal to our friends, can literally go and jump into a pool."

Mandela on the West

Subsequently, let's hear the ANC leader's real thoughts on the West that has put him on a posthumous pedestal, and on topics that, to say the least, are not exactly popular among Western leaders.

On the U.S. preparing its war against Iraq in 2002: "If you look at those matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace. If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the USA. They don't care for human beings."

In a 1999 speech: "Israel should withdraw from all the areas which it won from the Arabs in 1967, and in particular Israel should withdraw completely from the Golan Heights, from south Lebanon and from the West Bank."

"The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians." (RT)

The revolutionary Mad Dog

On the day of Mandela's funeral, December 15, 2013, a citizen from Accra, Ghana, expressed:

"All day long here in Ghana they have been broadcasting live the Memorial Service of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Courtesy, of course, of the BBC and Deutsche Welle? Why on earth doesn't Africa have its own Broadcasting Network in this day and age? The news coverage on the BBC is always distorting according to their own interest, and that on Deutsche Welle a bit less, but still not African! And in all of Ghana a nations with so many media resources there is not a single foreign correspondent in the lot! Why must Africans always depend on others to tell their own stories to them?! Shame! Shame! Shame!"

In fact, there actually was someone working on an African broadcasting network. Someone who already connected the entire African continent by radio, television and telephone. In the early 90s, this person funded the establishment of the Regional African Satellite Communication Organization, which eventually provided Africa with its first own communications satellite on December 26, 2007. A second African satellite was launched in July 2010 and advanced plans for a continental broadcasting network were made. The person who funded at least 70% of this revolutionary project was the revolutionary leader of the Libyan Jamahiriya, Muammar Gaddafi.

Gaddafi thus angered the Western bankers, since Africa no longer would pay the annual $500 million fee to Europe for the use of its satellites, and of course no "self-respecting" banker was willing to fund a project that frees people from their claws. And this was not the only way in which Gaddafi angered the West to the point that he had to be eliminated from their agenda. The leader of the Libyan Al-Fateh Revolution worked hard and came close to embody the famous 1865 quote by American economist Adam Smith, saying: "The economy of any country which relies on the slavery of blacks is destined to descend into hell the day those countries awaken."

On the eve of the NATO-led war against Libya, Gaddafi's booming country largely co-funded three projects that would rid Africa from its financial dependence on the West once and for all: the African Investment Bank in the Libyan city of Sirte, the African Monetary Fund (AFM), to be based in the capital of Cameroon, Yaounde, in 2011, and the African Central Bank to be based in the capital of Nigeria, Abuja. Especially the latter angered France not coincidentally also the main orchestrator of the war on Libya because it would mean the end of the West African CFA franc and the Central African CFA franc, through which France kept a hold on as much as thirteen African countries. Only two months after Africa said no to Western attempts to join the AFM, Western organized "protests" against the AFM's benefactor, Muammar Gaddafi, started to erupt in Libya… ultimately resulting in the freezing of $30 billion by the West, which money mostly was intended for the above mentioned financial projects.

But Gaddafi helped the African continent in more than just material ways. More than any other African leader, he supported Mandela's ANC's struggle against the racist regime in South Africa. Above that, many Black Africans, especially sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees, found a new home in Gaddafi's prosperous Libya.

Gaddafi understood that in order to develop a strong Africa that would be able to finally throw off the shackles of imperialism, unity was the first requirement. The 2009 Chairperson of the African Union also understood the African culture and recognized that African problems need African solutions. During a 2010 meeting in Tripoli, in which he addressed dozens of leaders from across Africa, he told: "African traditions are being replaced with Western culture and multiparty politics is destroying Africa." Instead, Gaddafi promoted the establishment of a People's Government (Jamahiriya) in which the power would not belong to (puppet) governments, but to the African people. And nothing scared the Western capitalists more than a united Africa Muammar Gaddafi's dream that was about to come true by the end of 2010.

The lukewarm Saint

When Nelson Mandela endured 27 years of isolation in prison, he paid the price of being the socialist revolutionary and the racial equality fighter that he was. His freedom was taken away by the South African Apartheid regime, a regime that was the result of the infiltration of South Africa by European colonial powers. How come the same colonial powers now consider him to be a hero and a saint? Did the Western elite have a massive change of mind, and thus all of the sudden embraced the exact same ideology that made them put Mandela behind bars a few decades ago?

We only have to take a look at the current situation of the Blacks in NATO-led Libya to understand that this was not quite the case. Libya, in 1951 officially the poorest country in the world, under Gaddafi attained the highest standard of living in Africa. The country's prosperity attracted many Black African immigrants, during the 2011 war on Libya by the mainstream media purposely misnamed as being "black sub-Saharan African mercenaries". Gaddafi provided them with work and education. Those immigrant workers, to whom Gaddafi was a hero, a father and a friend, now face the cruelest forms of racism by the Western-installed Libyan puppet regime. Just one telling example is a video in which Libyan "rebels" force Black immigrants to eat the green flag of the Libyan Jamahiriya.

Then why the 180 degrees change of attitude of the West towards Mandela after his release from prison?

Statistics show that still 65% of the Blacks in South Africa remain unemployed, while 90% of the Whites own 90% of South Africa's wealth. Over the last decades, Apartheid may have disappeared for the visual scene, fact is that Blacks remain poor while Whites remain rich.

Yet the West regards Mandela as the protector of the South African economy. According to a Financial Times journalist, Mandela's ANC "proved a reliable steward of sub-Sahara Africa's largest economy, embracing orthodox fiscal and monetary policies." Canadian The Globe and Mail recently added that Mandela did this "without alienating his radical followers or creating a dangerous factional struggle within his movement".

In other words, Mandela ran with the hare and hunted with the hounds… mainly economically and nothing interested, interests and will interest the Western capitalist countries more than economics.

As aptly stated by independent writer Stephen Gowans,

"Thus, in [The Globe and Mail journalist Doug] Saunder's view, Mandela was a special kind of leader: one who could use his enormous prestige and charisma to induce his followers to sacrifice their own interests for the greater good of the elite that had grown rich off their sweat, going so far as to acquiesce in the repudiation of their own economic program."

""Here is the crucial lesson of Mr. Mandela for modern politicians," writes Saunders. "The principled successful leader is the one who betrays his party members for the larger interests of the nation. When one has to decide between the rank-and-file and the greater good, the party should never come first."

"For Saunders and most other mainstream journalists, "the larger interests of the nation" are the larger interests of banks, land owners, bond holders and share holders. This is the idea expressed in the old adage "What's good for GM [General Motors], is good for America." Since mainstream media are large corporations, interlocked with other large corporations, and are dependent on still other large corporations for advertising revenue, the placing of an equal sign between corporate interests and the national interest comes quite naturally."

I believe the dictionary has a word for that: lukewarm.

What if Mandela had not danced to the tune of the imperialists?What if he did have said words and did have made plans that were too threatening to the interests of the corporate financiers who run the planet the reason why Gaddafi had to be killed? Then South Africa under his leadership quite likely would have become what Iraq and Libya currently are: a country in turmoil, torn apart by imperialist powers that Mandela, not inconceivable even out of fear for what they are capable of, preferred to side with.

Also the inevitable question arises: where was Mandela when his brother Gaddafi's country was bombed for nine months by the most powerful military alliance in modern history? Sources have declared by that time his health was too fragile and he was in a too vulnerable state of mind, for which reason his family deliberately kept him away from news that would severely upset him. Whatever the case may be, the significant fact remains that no ANC member stood up for Gaddafi during the war on Libya the way Gaddafi stood up for his friend Mandela during his imprisonment and afterwards.

The lesson for us

At the beginning of a new year, let us allow ourselves to take a few moments to reflect on our destiny and on that of the post-Mandela and post-Gaddafi world we live in. We live in a time of transition on all fronts. More than ever we are faced with the choice of being guided by fear especially by the fear of losing credibility with the public and being punished by "authorities" when we challenge the powers-that-be or being guided by the freedom of thought. The latter will result in a higher level of understanding of both ourselves and the world around us, which is the main condition for a much needed ®evolution and for the establishment of true democracy.

What the world needs now, are "Mad Dogs". Revolutionaries with a vision who dare to be unconventional and dare to be so all the way. It is time for us to become a Gaddafi rather than a Mandela. It is time to let the walls of fear around our thinking fall away. It is time to break free from the fear of not being liked, of no longer being accepted, of being looked upon differently, of being branded an outcast, a lunatic, a conspiracy theorist or anything bad when we raise our voices.

We need to dare to totally tear aside the veil of Apartheid that mights and media use to cover up what is really going on in the world. Only then real progress can be achieved.

"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our mind." Bob Marley

[Peter Lemkin]

CIA Role in Mandela's Capture?

Nelson Mandela in prison. He was released in 1990, after being incarcerated for 27 years.
http://www.dailyhistory.net

While the mass media devoted hours of broadcast time and scores of articles to Mandela's release, they missed a key part of the story on how he got to prison in the first place--namely, the CIA's reported role in luring Mandela to his capture.
Mandela was arrested in August 1962, while traveling disguised as a chauffeur. According to 1986 reports in the South African press, Mandela had been on his way to a top secret meeting with the U.S. consul in Durban, South Africa--Donald Rickard, a diplomat reputed to be a CIA officer. Rickard, the reports said, had tipped off the South African authorities to the time and place of his meeting with Mandela, allowing him to be apprehended.
This story was referred to on [B]CBS Evening News (8/5/86), in an op-ed column in the [B]New York Times (10/13/86), and it received extensive coverage in the Fall/Winter 1986 [B]National Reporter. But in all the reporting on Mandela's release, FAIR saw no mention of the CIA's reputed role in his capture.

http://fair.org/extra-online-article...delas-capture/[/B][/B][/B]

Exclusive: NSA, FBI, DIA Sued over Refusal to Disclose U.S. Role in Imprisonment of Nelson Mandela




In a Democracy Now! exclusive, one of the nation's most prolific transparency activists, Ryan Shapiro, reveals he is suing the NSA, FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency in an attempt to force them to open their records on one of the country's greatest secrets: how the U.S. helped apartheid South Africa capture Nelson Mandela in 1962, leading to his 27 years in prison. The U.S. has never confirmed its involvement, but details have leaked out over the years. Shapiro already has a pending suit against the CIA over its role in Mandela's capture and to find out why it took until 2008 for the former South African president to be removed from the U.S. terrorist watch list. The NSA has already rejected one of Shapiro's requests for its information on Mandela, citing "national defense."


Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to a Democracy Now! exclusive involving the National Security Agency and Nelson Mandela. Today, one of the leading transparency activists in the United States has turned his attention to one of this country's greatest secrets. Ryan Shapiro has just filed a lawsuit this morning against the NSA, the FBI and the Defense Intelligence Agency in an attempt to force the agencies to release documents about the U.S. role in the 1962 capture and imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, the late South African president and anti-apartheid leader.
The United States has never confirmed its involvement, but details have leaked out over the years. In 1990, the Cox News Service quoted a former U.S. official saying, within hours after Mandela's arrest, a senior CIA operative named Paul Eckel admitted the agency's involvement. Eckel was reported as having told the official, quote, "We have turned Mandela over to the South African security branch. We gave them every detail, what he would be wearing, the time of day, just where he would be. They have picked him up. It is one of our greatest coups," unquote. Several news outlets have reported the actual source of the tip that led to the arrest of Mandela was a CIA official named Donald Rickard. Mandela was held for 27 years after he was captured.
Ryan Shapiro already has a pending suit against the CIA over its role in Mandela's capture and to find out why it took until 2008 for Mandela to be removed from the U.S. terrorist watch list. So far, no government agency has opened its secret records on Mandela. The NSA has already rejected one of Shapiro's requests for its information on Mandela, citing, quote, "national security."
Over the past decade, Ryan Shapiro has become a leading freedom of information activist, unearthing tens of thousands of once-secret documents. His work focuses on how the government infiltrates and monitors political movements, in particular those for animal and environmental rights. Today, he has around 700 Freedom of Information Act requests before the FBI, seeking around 350,000 documents. That tenacity has led the Justice Department to call him the "most prolific" requester there isin one year, two per day. It has also led the FBI to dub his academic dissertation a threat to national security.
Ryan Shapiro, welcome to Democracy Now!
RYAN SHAPIRO: Thank you so much for having me. It's a real honor.
AMY GOODMAN: So, let's start with Nelson Mandela.
RYAN SHAPIRO: All right.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about why you have applied for this information.
RYAN SHAPIRO: Sure. So, I'm pursuing these records mostly because I'm interested in knowing why the U.S. intelligence community viewed Mandela as a threat to American security and what role the U.S. intelligence community played in thwarting Mandela's struggle for racial justice and democracy in South Africa. As you said, I'm especially interested in records pertaining to the U.S. intelligence community's role in Mandela's 1962 arrest and Mandela's placement on the U.S. terror watch list until 2008, which was years after he had won not only the Nobel Peace Prize, but the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal and U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.
AMY GOODMAN: Not to mention, he was the president of South Africa.
RYAN SHAPIRO: Yes, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: So all through that period, he was considered a terrorist by the United States.
RYAN SHAPIRO: Yes, he was.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to journalist Andrew Cockburn, who first reported on the CIA link to Nelson Mandela's arrest in 1986 in The New York Times. He's now the Washington editor for Harper's magazine. We interviewed him in December, and I asked him to talk about what he had found out in the mid-'80s. At this point, Nelson Mandela had been in prison for over 20 years.

ANDREW COCKBURN: He had beenI found outI reported that he had beenas you mentioned, that he had been arrested, thanks to a tip from the CIA, while disguised as a chauffeur. He was actuallywhat I had heard at the time was he was actually on his way to meet an undercover CIA, an American diplomat who was actually a CIA official. So it made it rather easy for them to alert the South Africans where to find him.

I mentionedI thought it was particularly interesting to report when I did in 1986, because at that point it was just when the sanctions were being introduced overvoted through by the Congress over President Reagan's veto. So, and I had noticed that in the sanctions legislation, it said there should be no contact, official contact, with the South African military, and so on and so forth, except when intelligence required that, you know, they did have to have contact. So it was ongoing, this unholy relationship, which had led to Mandela being arrested and locked up for all those years, continued on through the '60s, through the '70s, through the '80s, absolutely flourished, with thefor example, the NSA routinely handing over intercepts of the ANC to the South African secret police. ...

U.S. military intelligence cooperated very closely with South African military intelligence, giving them information about what was going on, what they were collecting in the rest of southern Africa. And, in fact, you know, the two countriesCIA and the South Africans collaborated on, you know, assisting the UNITA in the horrible civil war in Angola that went on for years and years with thousands of people dying. So, you know, this wasn't just a flash in the pan, the tip-off that led to the coordination on the arrest of Mandela. It was absolutely a very deep, very thorough relationship that went on for decades.

AMY GOODMAN: That was journalist Andrew Cockburn. I now want to read from the letter the NSA sent to Ryan Shapiro in response to his Freedom of Information Act request for records on Nelson Mandela. The letter is dated December 31st, 2013, just a few months ago. It reads, in part, "To the extent that you are seeking intelligence information on Nelson Mandela, we have determined that the fact of the existence or non-existence of the materials you request is a currently and properly classified matter." The letter continues, quote, "the FOIA does not apply to matters that are specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive Order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign relations," end-quote. And it cites another statute: "Title 18 U.S. Code 798." Ryan Shapiro, explain.
RYAN SHAPIRO: Well, that next code is the Espionage Act of 1917. And as you've discussed many times on this show, this is the same odious law under which Chelsea Manning was convicted, Edward Snowden is facing charges, and Daniel Ellsberg was prosecuted for leaking the Pentagon Papers.
AMY GOODMAN: So, how do you get around the fact that you've been denied? Today, as we go to air, you filed thisa new FOIA with NSA. What changed in your request?
RYAN SHAPIRO: Well, today I filed a lawsuit against the NSA, FBI, DIA and CIA due to their failure to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. They are in violation of federal law, and so I'm suing them to hold them accountable to federal law. What changed is that they failed to comply with law, and so I'm suing them to hold them accountable.
How do we get around it? That's a verythat's a great question and a very tough one. The NSA is a very difficult nut to crack as far as FOIA is concerned. Not only does the NSA invoke national defense here, as well as the Espionage Act, they also invoke the NSA Act of 1959, whichthough the NSA Act of 1959 was passed years before the Freedom of Information Act was passed, the NSA has succeeded in convincing the courts that the NSA Act of 1959 exempts the NSA entirely from the obligations of FOIA. And so, the only times the NSA complies with the Freedom of Information Act is when it wants to, which is when the release of records will make the NSA look good, and it should therefore be unsurprising that the recent AP report found that the NSA failed to comply with theor, denied FOIA requests 98 percent of the time last year.
AMY GOODMAN: How are they in violation of the law?
RYAN SHAPIRO: Well, my FOIA attorney, Jeffrey Light, who is a D.C.-based FOIA specialist, will be arguing in part that Exemption 3 does not apply here, that in fact the NSA is wrong in arguing that the NSA Act exempts the agency entirely from FOIA. The NSA also failed to conduct an adequate search for records responsive to my request. And, perhaps most basically, they're notthey're not refusing to release records; they're saying that it would violate national security to even confirm or deny the existence of records. And whether or not the release of records might violate national security, my attorney and I intend to argue that simply confirming the existence or denying the existence of the records iswould certainly be within the bounds of the Freedom of Information Act.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to President Obama. Following Nelson Mandela's death last year, President Obama referenced Mandela's time in jail during his speech at the memorial.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: He would endure a brutal imprisonment that began in the time of Kennedy and Khrushchev, and reached the final days of the Cold War. Emerging from prison, without the force of arms, he would, like Abraham Lincoln, hold his country together when it threatened to break apart.

AMY GOODMAN: While Obama referenced the Kennedy administration in his memorial, he made no mention of the multiple reports that the CIA, under Kennedy, tipped off the apartheid South African regime in 1962 about Mandela's whereabouts. Now I want to gofast-forward to 1990. Nelson Mandela had been released from jail. Four months after his release, Nelson Mandela traveled to the United States. He spoke at Yankee Stadium, where he was introduced by Harry Belafonte.

HARRY BELAFONTE: Never in the history of humankind has there ever been a voice that has more clearly caught the imagination and the spirit and fired the hope for freedom than the voice of the deputy president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela.

NELSON MANDELA: The principle of "one person, one vote" on a common and non-racial voters' roll is therefore our central strategic objective. Throughout our lifetime, we have fought against white domination and have fought against black domination. We intend to remain true to this principle to the end of our days.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa, speaking at Yankee Stadium four months after his release from prison in South Africa. He came to the United States to thank those who had fought for his freedom. That clip is taken from Danny Schechter's film Mandela in America. Ryan Shapiro, we're going to move on in our next segment to talk about other cases you're involved with, but why is this so important to you? And also, talk about the latest news we have of President Obama seeking limits for the NSA.
RYAN SHAPIRO: Why is this so important to me? I want to know why. Nelson Mandela is now almost universally hailed as a tremendous freedom fighter, this heroic figure, and yet the United States actively suppressed his movement, was very likely involved in putting him in prison for decades, and supported both covertly and openly the apartheid state until near its end. Why? And the answer has to do with this blinkered understanding of national security, this myopic understanding that places crass military alliances and corporate profits over human rights and civil liberties. And I'm interested inI'm interested in highlighting how we as a nation need to foster a broader understanding of national security. And I think by trying to get records on why Nelson Mandela was on the U.S. terror watch list until 2008 is a good opportunity to do that.
AMY GOODMAN: And President Obama today announcing changing rules, not that those rules will affect your lawsuit?
RYAN SHAPIRO: That's right. Those rules will not affect my lawsuit. Obama's proposal offers some improvements, although only about one surveillance program and only limited portions thereof. But even more problematically, Obama's proposal offers no mechanism for transparency or serious oversight. Remember that the only reason we know about this program to begin with is the Snowden revelations, and that the director of national intelligence even lied to Congress about it. And now Obama is offering or proposing a few changes and then asking us to trust the same people who have been spying on us and lying to us in the first place. And we're still left with a secret spy agency, operating secret surveillance programs, obtaining secret permission from secret courts. There's just no mechanism for transparency. Indeed, as I was just saying, the NSA believes it's entirely exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. There's just no transparency. How can we trust an agency we aren't allowed to know anything about, especially an agency with this sort of track record?
AMY GOODMAN: Has the NSA ever been successfully sued?
RYAN SHAPIRO: I am unaware of any successful lawsuits against the NSAany FOIA lawsuits against the NSA. I don't know that there are none, but I am not aware of any. Very few have tried.
AMY GOODMAN: Ryan Shapiro, we're going to continue with you after break, talk about other issues that you've been involved with, trying to get information from the U.S. government. Ryan Shapiro has been called a "FOIA superhero" for his skill at obtaining government records using the Freedom of Information Act. We'll see if he will be successful in his lawsuit against the U.S. government, the NSA, the FBI, the DIA, in getting documents around the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. Again, the NSA letter that I just read said, though it wouldn't confirm the existence or nonexistence of the materials, that they are "currently and properly classified matter." This is Democracy Now! Back with Ryan Shapiro in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We continue with our interview with Ryan Shapiro, who the Justice Department calls the FBI's "most prolific" Freedom of Information Act requester. Well, if governments have always been notoriously secretive, new figures show Shapiro is fighting an especially uphill battle under President Obama. The Associated Press reports that last year the Obama administration censored more government files than ever before under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. It also cited more legal exceptions to justify withholding materials. Amidst intense public interest in surveillance programs, the government cited national security reasons for withholding information a record 8,496 times, more than double Obama's first year. The AP said it could not determine whether the denials amounted to an abuse of the exception or whether the public had simply asked for more documents about sensitive subjects. The NSA said it saw a 138 percent surge in records requests from people asking whether it had collected their phone or email records, which it generally refuses to confirm or deny, saying such requests pose an "unacceptable risk" because terrorists could check to see whether the U.S. had detected their activities. Your response, Ryan Shapiro?
RYAN SHAPIRO: I'm in total agreement with the AP report. Though President Bush initiated a disastrous welter of anti-transparency iniatives, President Obama has been, if anything, worse, including bringing more Espionage Act prosecutions of whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined and, as you just said, the new AP report showing invoking national security more than ever before to censor or deny FOIA requests.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to Leonard Downie Jr., the former executive editor of The Washington Post, who spoke to us about the excessive secrecy detailed in his report titled "The Obama Administration and the Press," which was commissioned by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

LEONARD DOWNIE JR.: First, there's too much that's classified. The president himself has said repeatedly in the past that too much information is classified. It's not just information that might be harmful to national security or human life; it's just lots and lots, millions and millions and millions of documents and pieces of information that are classified that shouldn't be. Obviously that preceded this administration, but it's not improved during this administration.

The president promised to have the most transparent government in American history. He promised to reduce overclassification. He promised to make it easier to obtain government information through the Freedom of Information Act. And so far, none of these promises have been kept. So, part of the reason for why I agreed to do this report for the Committee to Protect Journalists is I would like to alert the president to the fact that this is one of the mostthis is one of the first promises he made. He signed presidential directives about open government his first day in office. These are not being carried out by his administration. He still has time for his legacy to make good on these promises.

AMY GOODMAN: That's Leonard Downie, formerly with thethe former executive editor of The Washington Post. Your response to that, Ryan Shapiro?
RYAN SHAPIRO: Absolutely. We are experiencing a crisis of secrecy. And as historian of science Peter Galison at Harvard had shown, the amountthe universe of classified information now far exceeds the universe of nonclassified information. And, yes, President Obama, on day one, promised to be a real advocate for FOIA, and it's just the opposite of what we've seen. I mean, it's justabsolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: How do you go about filing these FOIA requestsyou known as the "FOIA superhero"?
RYAN SHAPIRO: Well, I mean, filing, itself, is a fairly easy process. One can just put a request in an envelope and send it off, or even email it. The problem is sending a request that's going to produce documents. The FBI is flatly allergic to the Freedom of Information Act, and it is fair to say it does everything within its power to avoid compliance with the Freedom of Information Act. So, it's very easy to send a request saying, "I want all records pertaining to X," and one will get a letter saying, "No, we couldn't find anything." And so, exactly how the FBI gets away with thisbecause it is a violation of the Freedom of Information Acthow the FBI gets away with this has been unclear, because while the CIA and the NSA have statutorily exempted themselves in large part from the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI hasn't been able to do that nearly as successfully. And so, they've developed an unknown number, but dozens of strategies for avoiding compliance with the act.
AMY GOODMAN: So, when they say, "We can't detect any files," but you know there are files, what do you do?
RYAN SHAPIRO: Well, the letter doesn't saythe letter doesn'tthe denial letter doesn't say they don't have files; it says, "We are unable to locate them." And what it's really saying is: "We looked in one place for one type of record, using one type of search, and we couldn't find anything." And what they're not telling you is that, in most cases, that's not the type and place and search methodology necessary to locate the responsive records.
AMY GOODMAN: So how do you push further?
RYAN SHAPIRO: Well, over the past five or six years, I have submitted hundreds of FOIA requests to the FBI. And each request, of course, was designed to produce responsive records, but it was also designed to see how the FBI was going to respond. And I would compare their responses, denials and successful letters, to seeto try and map out what it was that the FBI was doing, the various FBI strategies for failing to comply. I would also read declarations submitted by the FBI in court about how their databases worked and how their information retrieval systems worked. And I would submit FOIA requests about my FOIA requests. And now the FBI is refusing to process those. And I'm also suing the FBI for their failure to process my FOIA requests about my FOIA requests.
AMY GOODMAN: What are privacy waivers?
RYAN SHAPIRO: FOIA has nine exemptions. There are nine legitimate reasons, according to the Freedom of Information Act, that an agency may withhold a record or a portion thereof. And, you know, part of thoseone of those exemptionsor, several of those exemptions deal with privacy issues. And this is totally reasonable. It seems totally reasonable that I can't just request your FBI record without your consent. However, the FBI routinely abuses this privacy privilege andor this privacy exemption, to redact massive amounts of information that should not be redacted. And so, one of the things I've done in order to map out the nature and evolution of the FBI's understanding and handling of the animal rights movement has been to collect privacy waivers, so basically letters from activists saying that I'm allowed to request their FBI files, from roughly 300 leading animal rights activists from the 1970s to today.