Ray McGovern Attacked By NYPD before Petraeus Talk

[Peter Lemkin]

NYPD arrests, brutalizes' peace activist McGovern ahead of Petraeus speech

RT
10/31/2014 8:44:04 AM




Edited by Rasha Mohamed:
The New York Police Department has detained prominent peace activist and former CIA agent Ray McGovern, with witnesses saying he was "yelling in pain" during arrest. McGovern was detained ahead of a David Petraeus speech that he planned to attend.

McGovern was detained before the start of a talk between former CIA director David Petraeus, retired US Army Lt. Col. John Nagl, and author Max Boot on American Foreign Policy at the 92nd St Y., an Upper East Side cultural community center.

Anti-war group 'The World Can't Wait' said the activist was arrested "at protest of speech." He was reportedly prevented by security from entering, charged with criminal trespass and disorderly conduct, and will not be arraigned until Friday. The group has called for McGovern's release on Twitter and Facebook. The World Can't Wait alleged on Twitter that McGovern was "brutalized" by the NYPD and later reported "screams coming from backroom" where the activist was being held. RT has contacted the NYPD who have yet to respond to allegations.

It appeared that the activist was detained even before entering the venue, despite having a ticket for the event.

Independent journalist and filmmaker Cat Watters was due to film McGovern during the talk, asking a question of Petraeus, but as she arrived she saw McGovern being arrested by police, telling them "I have a ticket!" Watters told RT that McGovern has a shoulder injury and was apparently yelling in pain during the arrest. According to Watters, two members of World Can't Wait, which asked her to film, were to hang a banner from balcony written with the words "War Criminal Iraq Afghanistan" and covered with handprints in red ink - however, McGovern was not going to take part in this action.

"He [Ray] doesn't cause a ruckus. He asks questions. He stands up and turns his back," Watters described the protesters' plan.

McGovern is a former CIA officer turned political activist. He worked with the agency for just under three decades, retiring in 1990. He was highly critical and public about President George W. Bush's use of government intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq war. In 2006, he returned his Intelligence Commendation Medal in protest against the CIA's involvement in torture.






- See more at: http://www.el-balad.com/1221612#sthash.gYw3ql9O.dpuf

[Magda Hassan]

Again? Didn't they do the same a few years ago?

[Peter Lemkin]

Again? Didn't they do the same a few years ago?

He's been a target of many attacks, dirty tricks and smear campaigns...he is considered a 'turncoat' and 'traitor' as he left from inside to become a whistleblower and critic.

[Dawn Meredith]

WOW. That is horrible. I love Ray McGovern. Police state in action.

Dawn::dictator::

[Albert Doyle]

A perfect example of how the false stage of American politics is created by brute force and trespassing charges.

[Peter Lemkin]

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Transcript-- Ray McGovern on His Arrest and What he Wanted to Ask and Say to General Petraeus

By Rob Kall
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Ray McGovern talks about his brutal arrest by NYPD on Thursday night, preventing him from attending a talk given by General Petraeus...
(image by RT TV)

Here's the transcript of my conversation with Ray McGovern, on Friday, the day after he was arrested for trying to attend a talk by General Petraeus. He goes into some great detail on what he wanted to ask and say to Petraeus.


Interviewer:Rob Kall

Interviewee:Ray McGovern
Rob: Thisis the Rob Kall Bottom-up Radio Show WNJC 1360 AM, I am speaking with RayMcGovern.
Rayyou have just been through quite an experience...again. Can you tell me whathappened?
Ray: I wasup in the New York City teaching a course at Fordham University and atManhattan College. Yesterday October 30th and I heard as I was planning mylesson plans so to speak, that the General Petraeus was going to be speaking atthe 92nd Street Y, which is a feature of Manhattan, and so I thought,"damn I need to get to that lecture and I can because these classes areover before 7:30". So I arranged for a friend to get some tickets for somefriends of mine and me and I wanted to be there and especially when I saw therewas going to be Q & A (Question & Answers), I said that's for me, Youknow I'll try to get in some position or ask him a real question. In the mannerof what I did with Rumsfeld back in the May of 2006, where I had a wonderfulforeman debate with him or he kept coming back, and well anyhow.
Rob: That'sthe one where CNN picked it up and it went viral.

Ray: YesRob the funny thing about that-- there is nothing else in the whole world that happenedon May 04th 2006 and CNN and C Span had it live in Atlanta. So almost all theother Cable TV's and Network TV shows had it on so. I didn't have those greatexpectations for this one but I did want to have a chance to ask him sought oflike well General Petraeus says everybody what now, you famously asked manyyears ago "Please tell me how this all ends". I felt at that timeabout General Petraeus that was a kind of a funny question for a General to ask.
Iwas only a Captain of US Army but I always had some idea of how my tacticalapproach or strategic approach to this or that objective-- how it ends, you hadno idea. So you know now how it ends, don't you, because those crackerjacktroops that you trained, those Iraqi hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Army readyto take over, earlier this year to the embarrassment of everyone, it's on thisISIL up in the northern part of Iraq shot a couple of AK47 rounds...they allran. Four divisions-- four crackerjack divisions. The officers didn't run. Theytook Helicopters out of there getting out of dodge, but the men all ran. And itwas so embarrassing. Why? Because they not only ran without their weapons, theyleft tanks and artillery and all kinds of heavy weaponry behind them and the USwas embarrassed into this situation of having to send our fire bombers todestroy all the US manufactured hardware-- tanks and so forth. That we hadgiven to the Iraqi Army which we had trained so well and we needed to destroyall that stuffs so that ISIL wouldn't get it and use it against what was leftof theIraqi Army. Now the only peoplewho were jolly about that, of course, Rob, was the weapons manufacturers. Imean, is this a great country or what? You make the weapons you sell them toIraq, they leave them behind to the enemy you destroy them you may go up andsell it to Iraq again. You know I was thinking about General Allen who is backthere in Baghdad and it seemed that they have given him a second try right andso one of the things, if I had the chance, was to be asking...Petraeus are yougoing to get a Mulligan on this, are they going to give you a second try totrain the Iraqi's again to make them into the Crackerjack Army that you braggedabout before or are you going leave that to General Allen now. I mean the wholething if they weren't so...
WellI guess the bottom line for me Rob is to care as a guy, responsible for untoldsuffering, killing and I don't just mean Iraqi's Afghan's, I mean US GovernmentSoldiers-- that surge in Iraq-- that cost almost 1000 US troops that one Surgein Iraq, What did it do? It did nothing other than that to allow Cheney andBush to ride off into the western sunset not having lost the war. We all knewthat-- we knew that was the reason. What needed to be done at that point was tosay "look Iraqi's you are going to get your act together. If you don't workout an arrangement where Sunni and Shiaare welcome in one Government, we are out of there. Now that would have been2006 or 2007. What are we, 7 years later now with all kinds of death anddestructs itself. So Petraeus is the guy, for me representing the responsibleanalysts who kept telling president Obama, look Afghanistan is a fool's errand.You can surge there just as you surged in Iraq it's not going to make anydifference. So I get arrested and I was kept in prison overnight and Petraeusgets lauded I don't really have an account of what happened there. But those arebig fans you know and I don't know if he wore the merit badges that he had gotfrom Boy Scouts and other Medals. But he has been known to wear those on acivilian suit, but in any case he probably was given many encomia which wasvery ill deserved and I only regret that I didn't have a chance to ask him somereal questions as I did when I asked Rumsfeld in May of 2006 and I suspect, Robthat's one reason why they wouldn't let me in.
Rob: Haveyou encountered this before where they knew who you were and kept you out.
Ray:No...it hasn't. This is kind of doing and the back story here is alsointeresting Rob because I didn't buy the ticket by myself. I was little afraid,with all these capabilities that the Government has, that they would find outthat I was coming and do something to prevent me from entering. So I had someof friends buy the ticket, so we were sitting, a couple of us together, andguess what-- none my friends get in either. Now how did they know? These arenot friends and the fringes and the bullwarks of the revolutionary spirit.These are sober minded people and for some, in some way, anyone can leave meout doesn't have to imagine a whole bunch of things, they got wind of just thefact that we were going to go and, going to a performance of the SaintedGeneral named David Petraeus was a little too much to risk for the 92nd StreetY, which does not have the reputation that once enjoyed of being a progressiveplace where all manner of opinions were welcome.
Rob: Howare you now, the reports indicate that you were pretty roughed up by thePolice?
Ray: I was,it's not all that complicated. Earlier this week, namely on Monday, I had a badfall and I landed on two places one my left shoulder the other on my lefteyebrow, eight stitches in left eyebrow and a really, really bruised rotatorcuff on my left shoulder. Now that was Monday so I am still nursing this sortof thing and carrying this backpack all on my right shoulder and so when theysaid "look McGovern Ray you're not welcome here. We are turning down yourticket, we'll give your 50 bucks back but you can't come in", then Iremonstrated with them, I said "wait a second. iIt doesn't say anywheremy ticket you have the power to do that". So they called the cops and thecops grabbed me and you know the traditional thing is to put your hands behindyour back and put a set of handcuffs on you. And that's what they tried to do.I don't know if your bruised your wrists-- it was excruciatingly painful, they try to getyour left arm behind your back to meet your right arm and put on one set ofhandcuffs, so I screamed, because it was excruciating pain and what they endedup doing was stringing a couple of sets of handcuffs so that they could stillimmobilize me by joining my left wrist to my right, but only with the help ofseveral sets of handcuffs-- so that's how bad I was I got blood all over theback of my pants of course from lacerations. It was really" the final thinghere is that I have been accused of resisting arrest, just for shouting "heymy shoulder really hurts would you lay off".
Rob: So didthey charge you with resisting arrest.
Ray: Yes,they postponed the trial to whatever is going to happen. It is going to be inearly December but one of those wonderful bonafide lawyers that helps peoplelike me, argued my case and explained about the shoulder, said I had a ticket.So it remains to be seen what's going to happen but ironically, Rob, it's oneof those cases where you know where it was no...fun being in the dungeon of theNew York City prison last night.
Butyou know all things work to the good in my view and I had a meaty experienceof, I call it innocent suffering, and Idon't know mean me. I mean the folksthat I was held up with, people who were guilty of nothing more than minormisdemeanors, lying as I tried to do, on this famous steel two foot bench there,trying to get some sleep, and you know that the treatment that they wereaccorded was not very respectful and so forth.


Soyou know it takes that kind of experience in my view, to give somebody like mewho is privileged and white and doesn't have to often contend with this kind ofstuff-- it takes a kind of spirit tohave any real idea of what it means for folks, not like me, and that I thinkthis worth the price of the admission certainly worth the price that I paid byhaving no sleep last night and being treated just like my new friends there inthe bottom of the New York City Jail.
Rob: Youknow I had James Risen the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times Reporter whothe Obama administration has been threatening with jail (on my show this week) andI talked to a good number of Whistle Blowers who have been threatened and harassedand intimidated by agents of the Obama administration, do you see this is apattern.
Ray: WellYes, I certainly do, with journalists and with whistle blowers. I wouldn'thonor myself by comparing me or putting me in that category. Although I guess,now that you did mention it, it could be that you know I would like think mostprogressive people in this country will consider what happened to me, if theyever learn about it, as really absurd, but you know what, the governmentdoesn't seem to care much about that, if there is some shock value in it, ifthere is some, quote, deterrent value in it, if people think twice before askingintelligent questions to a saint like Petraeus, well in their view, what's tolose? It's all for the good. We intimidate people these days. That's what we do. So maybe you're right, maybe there's a touchof that, but I think they, reflecting on it, they just wanted to make surenobody asks Sainted Petraeus any intrusive questions like "have you noshame David Petraeus? Have you no shamein bragging about your successes in Iraq and Afghanistan when both places arefalling apart. And this chaos in Iraq when the Army you trained ran away whenpushed-- that was a gentle push, for God's sake. A bunch of radicals calledISIL using their makeshift weaponry against the best the US military gave tothe Iraqi forces.
Peoplelike Petraeus need to be exposed and I am reminded, he had a boss a head of CENTCOM at one pointit was Admiral William Fallon. The first time he visited Petraeus who was in asubordinate highly significant command position, he complained that you knowthis guy is a chicken*hit. He fawned upto me. He curried favor with me "I hate that kind of things saysFallon" okay. Now Fallon, you may remember, was the Admiral who told myfriend Pat Lang "we are not going to do Iran" okay. Whatever you seein this papers we are not going to do Iran and this is when Fallon was head ofCENTCOM okay. So Fallon has uncommon guts and that's why he was canned by Bushand Cheney not long thereafter.
Soyou have the Petraeuses of this world who are the chicken*hit people you knowand when they went up there by being really careful to say the right the thingsand not to say the wrong things. And as I was thinking about Petraeus as I tookthe bus up from Washington to do my teaching yesterday, I was thinking about awhole bunch of things, but one that stuck in my craw which is particularly irksome.It has to do with inadvertent release by Petraeus himself of emails that hewrote to a fellow who was the arch neocon. His name was Max Boot. Now whathappened? Well what happened was this-- in March of 2010-- Petraeus came backfrom Afghanistan and he had in his written briefing a couple of sentences whichI will read to you.
Ray: Quote:The Israel Palestine conflict, foments anti American sentiment due to aperception of US favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinianquestion limits the strength and depth of the US partnerships with governmentsand people in our area of operations, and not only that, meanwhile Al-Qaeda andits clients and other military groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world, with its clientsLebanese Hezbollah and Hamas. What Petraeus is saying there is that therigidity of the Netanyahu government is responsible for the killing of lots ofUS soldiers because the Arabs really don't like the fact that there is nodaylight between the US and Israel on these important questions. Now what's thestory here? The story here is that as soon as somebody mentioned that thatparagraph was in his prepared briefing, he pretended he never heard of it andas the media picked it up, he was just really upset because he didn't want toseem like he was criticizing Israel.

Sowhat does he do well he sends an email to this Arch conservative Max Boot, andhe says "Max I didn't say that, it was not in my oral briefing, whatshould I do? Should I say that I had lunch with Elie Wiesel recently or theyare not going to go to a holocaust celebration. I am afraid people will call meAnti Semitic". Max Boot just said "don't worry pal don't worry aboutit Dave everything's going to be alright". I just wrote an Op-Ed whichclears the whole thing and so nobody is going to think that you are AntiSemitic.
Nowthe date of this correspondence was the 16th of March 2010 and as I say, let'sface it. Petraeus is not real good with email, right. He said he responded to acongratulatory email from the friend of mine, he said "way to go finally youmentioned the real core of the problem in the Middle East, the Arab- Israeliconflict and Petraeus sent a little note saying, well for your information,here is what Max Boot has to say about it and he didn't delete the rest of thething.
So finally he sees Petraeus saying oh but Maxwould it help if folks knew that Elie Wiesel and his wife were at a quarterSunday night and they are not going to be speaking at the 65th anniversary ofLiberation of Concentration camps at the Capitol dome and Boot says "nah Idon't think you really need to worry about that, because you are really notbeing accused of being an Anti Semitic", so Petraeus says "Roger,"exclamation point, smile face. Now there you go you know there is a snivelythere is an obsequious kind of guy with presidential aspirations-- we aretalking now several months before his other emails came to light and you knowhis experience with..that...what's her name-- Broadwell came to light. So hereis a guy that really...we used to call him AK'ers in the Bronx, brown noses isanother word
And you know what? He finally outdid himself,because in the end, the system got him. He got too big for his britches and Idon't mean just with Paula Broadwell okay, I mean with President Obama and,guess what, the Head of NSA, General Hayden, the Head of the FBI, RobertMuller, were told to dig out anything they can on Petraeus, get rid of him. AndPetraeus not being very good at email, security-- had all the kind of damagingstuffs. So it was very easy right after the election they co-operate and then theysay "you are out of here. Now if you want to say you are going on to someother job fine, but you are out of here because we know what you have beendoing."
Sowhat's this mean this means even the best of them even the saints can fall preyto this incredibly intrusive email, telephone surveillance and I wish I couldfeel more sorry for Petraeus but he got his in my view he got his justdesserts.
Rob:Alright Ray, I want to connect get this in to the hopper here so anything else?
Ray: WellRob I've got one other thing I want to go back, because it is extremelyrelevant to what's happening today. As you know, the torture report indicatingall the things the CIA and others did on the torture front has been bottled up and looks like they will waittill the end of the elections and see what happens in the senate.
Petraeushad an incredible role in torture. Now let me explain. Go back to April of 2004the Abu Ghraib's photographs the scandal. May 2004, one and only one honestinvestigation by General Taguba finds out that the press was as guilty as theapples at the bottom of the barrel, so to speak and in June General Petraeusgoes out with hand written instructions from a fellow named Donald Rumsfeld itis called Frago 242, Frago for fragmentary order, and it has to do with tortureand we know about it because of Wikileaks and Bradley Manning.
Sowhat did it say? It said, well you know it's getting a little embarrassed somake sure that US forces they don't torture anymore, but its as far as the Iraqis"if you see the Iraqi's one another you know...you might want to report that butyou don't have to and just make sure nobody is seen from our side from theAmerican side torturing people.
Nowwhy is that important? That's importantbecause that is what Bradley Manning saw when he was posted there. He was oneof the soldiers that was tasked to go in to Baghdad and round up young people hisage-- he was 22, okay, and he did so. People who wrote a term paper that wascreditful of the Iraqi Prime Minister. Okay and what did he do? Well hecomplained-- he said, "We know what's going on in those jails" and they said "forgetabout it, Go home and complete your tour and don't say anything."


That'sa large, in measure, what motivated Bradley Manning to that the kinds of thingshe did. But more important, in respect to Petraeus, those were the rules okay,those were the rules from June 2004 until November 2005. What happened then, USJournalists learned what was going on in Iraqi prisons particularly the ones inBaghdad and they were astonished and finally the Chairman of the Joint Chiefsyou remember the Nimrod straight Peter Pace they got up there with Rumsfeld,they had a press conference and one of thejournalists said "General Pace we hear about this terrible torture goingon in Iraq, especially in Iraq prisons, we are wondering, what are yourinstructions sir when US soldiers see torture going on?" Without batting an eyelash,he says "my instructions are they must stop that on the spot-- doeverything in their power to stop the torture on the spot."
Rumsfeld:"General I don't think you mean to stop it on the spot, I think you meanthat they may want to report it".
Pace"No Sir, I meant what I said. My instructions are to stop it on thespot". Now what does all that mean, and all means that Petraeus wasreporting not to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he was reporting toRumsfeld and Politicos and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff didn'tknow about Frago 242 dated June 2004, which had been in effect for a year and ahalf and it involved Iraqi's torturing one and other and other people torturingone another . So that's the kind guy Petraeus is I and think that he should beheld to account for that kind of thing and maybe a little publicity concerninghim and his Quasi Sainthood should reveal what kind of...what's the word...Iwould say Chameleon...what kind of...well, person he really is, I think AdmiralFellon had it right when he said "I really hate chicken*hit and the lastpart of that is hit folks.
Rob: ThanksRay. I hope you are healing up.
Ray: Wellthanks yes I got some you know Aspirin in me and shoulder will heal and I willstay away from dangerous places in the future.
Rob: I hopeyou don't stay away too much we need you standing up to the powers that be thatdon't tell the truth and attempt to do what they can to silence people.

Ray: Wellwe are going to act together Rob, and I appreciate your work as well.

[David Guyatt]

From Consortium News:

The Mystery of Ray McGovern's Arrest

November 8, 2014

Exclusive: On Oct. 30, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern was arrested for trying to attend a public speech by retired Gen. David Petraeus. McGovern had hoped to ask Petraeus a critical question during Q-and-A but was instead trundled off to jail, another sign of a growing hostility toward dissent, McGovern says.
By Ray McGovern
Why, I asked myself, would the New York City police arrest me and put me in The Tombs overnight, simply because a security officer at the 92nd Street Y told them I was "not welcome" and should be denied entry to a talk by retired General David Petraeus? In my hand was a ticket for which I had reluctantly shelled out $50.
I had hoped to hear the photogenic but inept Petraeus explain why the Iraqi troops, which he claimed to have trained so well, had fled northern Iraq leaving their weapons behind at the first whiff of Islamic State militants earlier this year. I even harbored some slight hope that the advertised Q & A might afford hoi polloi like me the chance to ask him a real question.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern

However rare the opportunity to ask real questions has become, it can happen. Witness my extended (four-minute) questioningof then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Atlanta on May 4, 2006. The exchange wasn't exactly the oh-so-polite give-and-take of the Sunday talk shows but it represented what Americans should expect of democracy, a chance to confront senior government officials when they engage in deception or demonstrate incompetence especially on issues of war or peace.
It seems a safe guess that somebody wanted to protect Petraeus from even the possibility of such accountability on Oct. 30. Also, let me make clear that I had no intention of embarrassing the retired four-star general and ex-CIA director with a question about his extramarital affair with his admiring biographer Paula Broadwell, which precipitated his CIA resignation in November 2012.
Many an aging male ego has been massaged by the attentions of someone like Broadwell, and she seemed happy to do the massaging to expedite the research on All In, her biography of the fabled general. I had decided to resist the temptation to refer to the Biblical admonition against entrusting large matters to those who cannot be faithful in small things.
The affair may not have been a small thing to Mrs. Petraeus, but it pales in significance when compared to the death and destruction resulting from Petraeus's self-aggrandizing disingenuousness and dissembling about prospects for eventual success in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[B]Petraeus Agonistes[/B]
[B]Assuming that Petraeus's expertise in counterinsurgency warfare was more than mere pretense, he knew both expeditions were doomed to failure. And he certainly now knows the inevitable answer to the question he famously posed to journalist Rick Atkinson in 2003 as U.S. forces troops began to get mired down in the sand of Iraq "Tell Me How This Ends."[/B]
[B]The twin conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq "ended" if that's the right word for these late-stage fiascos with two additional stars pinned to Petraeus's uniform and with some 6,700 gold stars sent to the wives, husbands, or parents of U.S. troops killed, plus tens of thousands of purple hearts for those badly injured in both body and mind. A bad bargain for the American people and especially the dead and maimed U.S. troops not to mention the hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed Afghans and Iraqis but a pretty successful career move for Petraeus, if not for his fateful extramarital affair.[/B]
[B]Surely, in the grim light of all the bloodshed, L'Affaire Broadwell can be seen as a minor peccadillo, the least of Petraeus's sins. But many of his ardent admirers view the sexual indiscretion as the only blot on his otherwise spotless dress uniform festooned with row after row of medals and ribbons.[/B]
[B]It was my intent to put the spotlight, via a question or two, on Petraeus's far more consequentially dishonest behavior. And this seemed particularly important at this point in time, as his starry-eyed emulator generals seem no less willing than Petraeus to throw a new wave of youth from a poverty draft into a fool's-errand sequel in Iraq and Syria.[/B]
[B]In any event, it seems reasonably clear why they did not let me enter the 92nd Street Y on Oct. 30. Someone thought that the thin-skinned ex-general might be discomforted by a less-than-admiring question. His speech was to be another moment for Petraeus to bathe in public adulation, not confront a citizen or two who might pose critical queries. [For more on Petraeus and his acolytes, see Consortiumnews.com's "Petraeus Spared Ray McGovern's Question."][/B]
[B][B]Lingering Mystery[/B][/B]
[B]But one mystery lingers. The "organs of state security" (the words used by the Soviets to refer to their intelligence/security services) were lying in wait for me when I walked into the Y? Why? How on earth did they know I was coming?[/B]
[B]My initial reaction was that the culprit could be a lingering BOLO, the "Be on the Look-Out" warning that the State Department had issued against me earlier for my non-violent anti-war stances. In September, thanks to a civil rights lawsuit filed on my behalf by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), the State Department rescinded that BOLO alert for me, under which State Department agents had been ordered to stop and question me on sight.[/B]
[B]State Department documents acquired under the Freedom of Information Act showed that the damning evidence behind that draconian (and patently unconstitutional) order was "political activism, primarily anti-war."[/B]
[B]The proximate cause was my standing silently with my back to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Feb. 15, 2011, to protest the unconscionably violent policies she had promoted, including her vote for the Bush-Cheney war of aggression against Iraq (which she thought politically smart at the time) and her infamous suggestion during her political campaign that we could "obliterate" Iran.[/B]
[B]In response to my silent protest, I was roughed up, cuffed, arrested, and jailed as Clinton delivered a major speech at George Washington University admonishing foreign governments not to stifle dissent. Heedless of the irony, Clinton did not miss a syllable, much less a word, as she watched me snatched directly in front of her and brutally removed. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Standing Up to War and Hillary Clinton."][/B]
[B]The charges were immediately dropped, since there were simply too many cameras recording what actually did happen to me. A State Department investigation into my background came up dry; but the words "political activism, primarily anti-war" were enough to get me BOLOed.[/B]
[B]The State Department assured my pro bono lawyers at the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund that State not only had rescinded the BOLO but also had notified other law enforcement agencies that the BOLO was "non-operational." But I remained suspicious that, while the State Department's assurance may have been made in good faith, God only knows (and then only if God has the proper clearances) what other organs of state security had entered the "derogatory" information about the danger of my "political activism" into their data bases.[/B]
[B]Had my "derog" been shared, perhaps, with the ever-proliferating number of "fusion centers" that were so effective in sharing information to track and thwart the activists of Occupy including subversives like Quakers and Catholic Workers? However, as I reflected on the circumstances of my arrest on Oct. 30, I came to discount the possible role of the BOLO.[/B]
[B][B]Taken by Surprise[/B][/B]
[B][B]As I walked up the steps to the 92nd Street Y on Oct. 30, I had no idea there would be a reprise of the treatment accorded me three-and-a-half years ago at Hillary Clinton's speech.[/B][/B]
[B][B]My friend and associate in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) Bill Binney, a former Technical Director at the National Security Agency before he left in protest against NSA's unconstitutional eavesdropping on Americans, long since advised me to assume that I am one of several thousands subjected to post-Fourth-Amendment surveillance.[/B][/B]
[B][B]So I had taken the precaution of asking a friend, who was in no way linked to me via email or phone records, to order the ticket for me, just on the off-chance the organs of state security might learn I intended to hear Petraeus speak at the 92nd Street Y and might do something to prevent my attending.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Actually, it was pure coincidence that I happened to be in New York on the day of the Petraeus event. Months before, I had committed to teaching classes at Manhattan and Fordham universities on Oct. 30. I learned of the Petraeus event much later.[/B][/B]
[B][B]At that point, I chose what I thought would be a safe way to purchase a ticket. But I apparently failed to practice the kind of "tradecraft" in terms of limiting associations that is needed to function in today's democratic society.[/B][/B]
[B][B]How did the organs of state security learn I was coming? It is more likely to have been guilt by association than the residue from a BOLO. In short, when I travel to New York to teach, I normally email my friend Martha at Maryhouse in the Bowery the Catholic Worker house founded by her grandmother, Dorothy Day.[/B][/B]
[B][B]If there is a free bed, I gratefully receive Catholic Worker hospitality and have a chance to enjoy the company of those who have been placed at the margins of society, as well to witness the selfless kindness of those forming authentic relationships with them.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Here's the catch. Catholic Workers are involved not only in extending hospitality but also in activism, trying, as Dorothy Day did, to make the world a less violent, more caring place. It is primarily the activism, of course, that brings scrutiny from the organs of security, but you might call it "political activism, primarily anti-war," as the State Department did.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Moreover, the Catholic Worker Movement is an international organization widely looked upon as subversive of the Establishment, and this adds to the suspicion. In recent years, many of my Catholic Worker friends have been arrested for protesting the use of drones to kill foreigners dubbed "militants," most of whom don't look like most of us.[/B][/B]
[B][B]But the targets can now include American citizens, as President Barack Obama turns the Constitution upside down and takes it upon himself to act as judge, jury and executioner. Yes, the Fifth Amendment has gone the way of the Fourth, and the First has become an endangered species. Worth protesting before it too is extinct, would you not agree?[/B][/B]
[B][B][B]At The Tombs[/B][/B][/B]
[B][B]In a kind of poetic justice, it turns out my friend Martha has the same court date as I have the morning of Dec. 8 at the New York City Criminal Court building (aka "The Tombs") at 100 Centre Street in New York, where I spent the night/morning of Oct. 30/31. She was arrested with about 100 others at a Sept. 22 action dubbed "Flood Wall Street," protesting the important role of the financial industry in facilitating air pollution and global warming.[/B][/B]
[B][B]In an aside, Martha told me that the police had as much trouble getting handcuffs on the "polar bear" sitting next to her that day as they did on Oct. 30 trying to bend my injured left shoulder back far enough to get the cuffs on me. I look forward to standing at the same dock where Martha will be defending her action which was very much in the tradition of "Grannie."[/B][/B]
[B][B]My Catholic Worker friends comfort the afflicted, while in no way shying away from afflicting the comfortable, as the saying goes. And for that, they often pay a price, including being snooped upon, in violation of the Fourth Amendment, for exercising their rights under the First.[/B][/B]
[B][B]I am not making this up: In the fall of 2010, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine criticized the FBI for conducting "anti-terrorism" spy operations against the Catholic Worker Movement and even the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh. According to Fine, spies were sent into the Merton Center to "look for international terrorists." One of the informers photographed a woman he thought was of "Middle Eastern descent" to have her checked out by "terrorism analysts."[/B][/B]
[B][B]So my possible tradecraft lapse may have been contacting my Catholic Worker friends. On Oct. 26, I sent Martha an email with the innocuous title, "Room in the Inn?" It contained the usual request for simple lodging at the Catholic Worker together with details regarding my classes at Fordham and Manhattan and the Petraeus event.[/B][/B]
[B][B]While the title and other metadata accompanying that message might seem singularly unsuspicious, eavesdroppers covering Martha's or my email addresses (or both) would have had no trouble ferreting out an email exchange following an earlier attempt to attend an event at the 92nd Street Y, three years ago.[/B][/B]
[B][B]On Sept. 8, 2011, a group of Catholic Workers, together with others all of us with valid tickets were summarily expelled, most of us 10 minutes before an event sponsored by the Jewish Policy Center. That event bore the title "9/11 a Decade Later: Lessons Learned and Future Challenges" and featured former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, ex-Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and George W. Bush's press spokesman Ari Fleisher. It was moderated by neoconservative talk show host Michael Medved.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Since I was not among those subjected to Y security's preventive strike before the performance, I sat quietly for Medved's opening rant about radical, fundamentalist Muslim terrorists, but then stood up in silent witness against the right-wing invective. I was unceremoniously, violently thrown out after a mere two minutes.[/B][/B]
[B][B]More relevant here: I still have in my email inbox a message of encouragement dated Sept. 12, 2011, in which Martha reminded me that every action, "successful" or not, is important; adding, "We of the Catholic Worker are fools for Christ,' as the saying goes."[/B][/B]
[B][B][B]Only Metadata[/B][/B][/B]
[B][B]You are perhaps thinking that the National Security Agency stores only metadata; and, if so, you would be wrong. Content is saved. So if the government wants to access the content of emails from the past, no problem.[/B][/B]
[B][B]As Bill Binney reminded me, former FBI director Robert Mueller let that particular cat out of the bag three-and-a-half years ago. In his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 30, 2011, Mueller bragged about having access to "past emails and future ones as they come in."[/B][/B]
[B][B]Binney explains that the metadata is used to access the content. And, thanks to the documents provided by Edward Snowden, we know that under NSA's PRISM operation, data is routinely collected directly from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple (and God knows where else, again assuming God is cleared).[/B][/B]
[B][B]So my best guess is that I can blame the "subversive" activities of the Catholic Workers and the monitoring of them by the organs of state security, for my recent arrest and overnight accommodations in The Tombs.[/B][/B]
[B][B]The people at the World Can't Wait in New York, who were also aware of my plan to take in the Petraeus performance, are known to have been targets of eavesdropping, too. With the surfeit of people sorting through emails from suspicious folks, it may be that both the Catholic Workers and the World Can't Wait were monitored all to keep us safe, of course.[/B][/B]
[B][B]It seems the height of irony that it may have been NSA's eavesdropping that enabled the White House to get rid of Petraeus, when he was getting too big for his britches (and I allude here not only to his dalliance with Broadwell). To Bill Binney, it is clear as day that the President was ready to move against Petraeus right after Obama's re-election in November 2012.[/B][/B]
[B][B][B]A Final, Sad Irony[/B][/B][/B]
[B][B]A couple of days after my arrest and jailing, I received a sympathetic email from "George" in Germany, who described himself as a national security whistleblower in his own right. George strongly suggested I ditch my Gmail account.[/B][/B]
[B][B]"Before Edward Snowden's revelations last spring," he said, "I too was using Gmail as my primary address. I was dismayed to learn that Google was an NSA PRISM partner." George strongly suggested that I switch to a more trustworthy email provider outside the U.S. and actually suggested one in particular.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Why ironic? In the years after my birth in 1939, Germany was widely considered the cutting edge on matters of eavesdropping and enhanced interrogation techniques, and most Germans didn't challenge these forms of oppression even when it touched them personally. Perhaps saddest of all, those with some pretense to moral leadership first and foremost the Catholic and Lutheran Churches could not find their voice. Is that history repeating itself in the U.S.?[/B][/B]
[B][B]In Defying Hitler, Sebastian Haffner's journal of his life as a lawyer in training to become a judge in Berlin in the early 1930s, the author (whose real name was Raimund Pretzel) provides an eerily reminiscent account of what ensued after Berlin's equivalent of the attacks of 9/11 the burning of the Reichstag.[/B][/B]
[B][B]"I do not see that one can blame the majority of Germans who, in 1933, believed that the Reichstag fire was the work of the Communists. What one can blame them for, and what shows their terrible collective weakness of character … is that this settled the matter.[/B][/B]
[B][B]"With sheepish submissiveness, the German people accepted that, as a result of the fire, each one of them lost what little personal freedom and dignity was guaranteed by the constitution, as though it followed as a necessary consequence. If the Communists had burned down the Reichstag, it was perfectly in order that the government took decisive measures.' … from now on, one's telephone would be tapped, one's letters opened, and one's desk might be broken into." (pp. 121-122).[/B][/B]
[B][B]Substitute Americans for Germans, terrorists for Communists, September 11, 2001, for 1933, and give some thought to where we seem to be headed. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. warned that "there is such a thing as being too late," a quotation that, ironically, President Obama is fond of citing. It would be a good thing if we Americans woke from our lethargy before it is too late.[/B][/B]
[B][B][B]Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served as an Army officer and then a CIA analyst for a total of 30 years, including two tours in Germany. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).[/B][/B][/B]