For years, radical activists and journalists, especially from the Black liberation movement, have claimed that the U.S. government was bent on reconstructing the dreaded COINTELPRO, or Counter Intelligence Program, with its blatant illegalities, its intrusions into acts and organizing supposedly protected by the constitution; and government spying. Many liberals of the so called left poo-pooed such claims. Now, a U.S. president has been forced to admit the authorization by presidential secret edict of government spying on thousands of U.S. citizens and residents through the National Security Agency or the NSA. Secret orders. Secret spying on Americans. Haven’t we heard this before?
The corporate press has urged that the presidential secret orders violate the law because they are spying on Americans without court orders. Anyone who has researched this question has found that judicial review of government spying is little more than window dressing. Years ago, writer Frank Donner noted, in The Age of Surveillance, that judicial review minimizes, not solves, the problem of governmental law breaking. Of the COINTELPRO era, Donner writes, “The enormous range and volume of these disclosures, their documentation of practices that continued unchecked, without regard to the changing coloration of particular administrations, confirm beyond challenge that the surveillance of dissent is an institutional pillar of our political order. A mode of governance. At the same time, they renew the perception that judicial proceedings not only deny protection against intelligence abuses, but block our understanding of the true role of intelligence in American statecraft. The successful outcome of a particular lawsuit is powerless to reduce the intimidating impact of surveillance programs. Judicial remedies are typically limited to individuals, and in any event, delayed until long after the conduct complained of.”
As Professor Jerold Auerbach has put it, “The operation may ultimately succeed. That is, the charges of rights violations may be vindicated, but the patient dies.” Moreover, as a matter of fact, King George the Third has nothing to fear from the judiciary, for there are secret courts. Yes, secret courts in a democracy, which are little better than judicial rubber stamps. These courts are known as FISA courts, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, where secret judges issue secret court orders to the executive to do what they want to do anyway. The Bush regime didn’t go to the secret route simply because they didn’t trust judges — they don’t unless they appoint them. They did so because they could. They did it for the same reason that the FBI launched 10s of thousands of wiretaps and investigations into the civil rights Movement, the Black liberation movement, the Anti- Vietnam war movement, the women’s movement, the Central American refugee movement, and beyond, to instill fear and paranoia into the psyches of the people. This is a government that rules not by reason or consensus, but by fear. Secret courts, secret judges, secret edicts, torture chambers and secret prisons — this is a secret government.
In a government that claims its roots in the revolution against the divine right of kings, presidents in violation of law, create power centers where even the illusion of judges are irrelevant. Like the kings of old England, rulers wage relentless wars against the people, for they were foreign conquerors imposing their will on a people who had no love for those who lived upon their exploitations. The divine right of kings has been succeeded by the divine right of the state, which wages secret wars against the people they claim to represent. Rulers always seek to expand their powers. Bush seeks to push the clock back to pre-COINTELPRO, to the Cold War era when fear ruled the roost and the good citizen saluted, sent his children to die for his rulers, sat down and shut up. Welcome to the new world order. From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are produced by Noel Hanrahan for Prison Radio.
