[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [SRRTAC-L:9379] {SPAM} Seven Stories Press Author Blacklisted (fwd)

[Al Kagan]

>Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 15:52:31 -0600 (CST)
>From: Dale Wertz <dwertz at mc.net>
>To: SRRT Action Council <srrtac-l at ala.org>
>cc: PLGNet-L at listproc.sjsu.edu
>Subject: [SRRTAC-L:9379] {SPAM} Seven Stories Press Author Blacklisted (fwd)
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>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>See also, "FBI's Post-Sept. 11 'Watch List' Mutates, Acquires Life of Its
>Own," article in today's Wall Street Journal.  dw
>
>
>Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 19:21:02 +0100
>From: Seven Stories Press <info at sevenstories.com>
>To: "dwertz at mc.net" <dwertz at mc.net>
>Subject: Seven Stories Press Author Blacklisted
>
>
>Dear Friends,
>
>
>Seven Stories authors are now getting black listed. The article 
>below describes
>how Barbara Olshansky was singled out at an American airport.
>
>Barbara is author of "Secret Trials and Executions: Military Tribunals and the
>Threat to Democracy."
>
>A link to her book can be found at
>http://www.sevenstories.com/Book/index.cfm?GCOI=58322100538410
>
>
>more soon,
>Greg Ruggiero
>
>Grounded: The Government's Air Passenger Blacklist
>
>By Dave Lindorff,
>Salon
><http://www.salon.com>
>November 17, 2002
>
>Barbara Olshansky was in Newark International Airport at the JetBlue departure
>gate last March when an airline agent at the counter checking her 
>boarding pass
>called airport security. Olshansky was subjected to a close search and then,
>though she was in view of other travelers, was ordered to pull her pants down.
>The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks may have created a new era in airport security,
>but even so, she was embarrassed and annoyed.
>
>Perhaps one such incident might've been forgotten, but Olshansky, 
>the assistant
>legal director for the left-leaning Center for Constitutional 
>Rights, was pulled
>out of line for special attention the next time she flew. And the 
>next time. And
>the next time. On one flight this past September from Newark to 
>Washington, six
>members of the center's staff, including Olshansky, were stopped and subjected
>to intense scrutiny, even though they had purchased their tickets 
>independently
>and had not checked in as a group. On that occasion, Olshansky got angry and
>demanded to know why she had been singled out.
>
>"The computer spit you out," she recalls the agent saying. "I don't know why,
>and I don't have time to talk to you about it."
>
>Olshansky and her colleagues are, apparently, not alone. For months, 
>rumors and
>anecdotes have circulated among left-wing and other activist groups 
>about people
>who have been barred from flying or delayed at security gates because they are
>"on a list."
>
>But now, a spokesman for the new Transportation Security Administration has
>acknowledged for the first time that the government has a list of about 1,000
>people who are deemed "threats to aviation" and not allowed on airplanes under
>any circumstances. And in an interview with Salon, the official suggested that
>Olshansky and other political activists may be on a separate list 
>that subjects
>them to strict scrutiny but allows them to fly.
>
>"We have a list of about 1,000 people," said David Steigman, the TSA 
>spokesman.
>The agency was created a year ago by Congress to handle transportation safety
>during the war on terror. "This list is composed of names that are provided to
>us by various government organizations like the FBI, CIA and INS ... We don't
>ask how they decide who to list. Each agency decides on its own who 
>is a 'threat
>to aviation.'"
>
>The agency has no guidelines to determine who gets on the list, Steigman says,
>and no procedures for getting off the list if someone is wrongfully on it.
>
>Meanwhile, airport security personnel, citing lists that are provided by the
>agency and that appear to be on airline ticketing and check-in computers, seem
>to be netting mostly priests, elderly nuns, Green Party campaign operatives,
>left-wing journalists, right-wing activists and people affiliated with Arab or
>Arab-American groups.
>
>Virgine Lawinger, a nun in Milwaukee and an activist with Peace Action, a
>Catholic advocacy group, was stopped from boarding a flight last spring to
>Washington, where she and 20 young students were planning to lobby 
>the Wisconsin
>congressional delegation against U.S. military aid to the Colombian 
>government.
>"We were all prevented from boarding, and some of us were taken to 
>another room
>and questioned by airport security personnel and local sheriff's 
>deputies," says
>Lawinger.
>
>In that incident, an airline employee with Midwest Air and a local sheriff's
>deputy who had been called in during the incident to help airport security
>personnel detain and question the group, told some of them that 
>their names were
>"on a list," and that they were being kept off their plane on 
>instructions from
>the Transportation Security Administration in Washington. Lawinger has filed a
>freedom-of-information request with the Transportation Security Administration
>seeking to learn if she is on a "threat to aviation" list.
>
>Last month, Rebecca Gordon and Jan Adams, two journalists with a San 
>Francisco-
>based antiwar magazine called War Times were stopped at the check-in 
>counter of
>ATA Airlines, where an airline clerk told them that her computer showed they
>were on "the FBI No Fly list." The airline called the FBI, and local 
>police held
>them for a while before telling them there had been a mistake and 
>that they were
>free to go. The two made their plane, but not before the counter attendant
>placed a large S for "search" on their baggage, assuring that they got more
>close scrutiny at the boarding gate.
>
>Art dealer Doug Stuber, who ran Ralph Nader's Green Party 
>presidential campaign
>in North Carolina in 2000, was barred last month from getting on a flight to
>Hamburg, Germany, where he was going on business, after he got engaged in a
>loud, though friendly, discussion with two other passengers in a 
>security line.
>During the course of the debate, he shouted that "George Bush is as dumb as a
>rock," an unfortunate comment that provoked the Raleigh-Durham 
>Airport security
>staff to call the local Secret Service bureau, which sent out two agents to
>interrogate Stuber.
>
>"They took me into a room and questioned me all about my politics," Stuber
>recalls. "They were very up on Green Party politics, too." They fingerprinted
>him and took a digital eye scan. Particularly ominous, he says, was 
>a loose-leaf
>binder held by the Secret Service agents. "It was open, and while they were
>questioning me, I discreetly looked at it," he says. "It had a long list of
>organizations, and I was able to recognize the Green Party, Greenpeace,
>EarthFirst and Amnesty International." Stuber was eventually released, but
>because he missed his flight, he had to pay almost $2,000 for a 
>full-fare ticket
>to Hamburg so that he did not miss his business engagement.
>
>A Secret Service agent at the agency's Washington headquarters confirmed that
>his agency had been called in to question Stuber. "We're not 
>normally a part of
>the airport security operation," Agent Mark Connelly told Salon. "That's the
>FBI's job. But when one of our protection subjects gets threatened, 
>we check it
>out." Asked about the list of organizations observed by Stuber, the Secret
>Service source speculated that those organizations might be on a list of
>organizations that the service, which is assigned the task of protecting the
>president, might need to monitor as part of its security responsibility.
>
>Additional evidence suggests that Olshansky, Stuber and other left-leaning
>activists are also seen as a threat to aviation, though perhaps of a different
>grade. A top official for the Eagle Forum, an old-line conservative 
>group led by
>anti-feminist icon Phyllis Schlafly, said several of the group's members have
>been delayed at security checkpoints for so long that they missed 
>their flights.
>According to Pax Christi, a Catholic peace organization, an American member of
>the Falun Gong Chinese religious group was barred from getting back on a plane
>that had stopped in Iceland, reportedly based on information supplied to
>Icelandic customs by U.S. authorities. The person was reportedly permitted to
>fly onward on a later flight.
>
>Hussein Ibish, communications director of the American Arab 
>Anti-Discrimination
>Committee, says his group has documented over 80 cases -- involving 
>200 people -
>- in which fliers with Arabic names have been delayed at the 
>airport, or barred
>altogether from flying. Some, he says, appear to involve people who have no
>political involvement at all, and he speculated that they suffered the
>misfortune of having the same name as someone "on the list" for legitimate
>security reasons.
>
>Until Steigman's confirmation of the no-fly list, the government had never
>admitted its existence. While FBI spokesman Paul Bresson confirmed 
>existence of
>the list, officials at the CIA and U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service
>declined to comment and referred inquiries back to the TSA. Details of how it
>was assembled and how it is being used by the government, airports 
>and airlines
>are largely kept secret.
>
>A security officer at United Airlines, speaking on condition of anonymity,
>confirmed that the airlines receive no-fly lists from the Transportation
>Security Administration but declined further comment,saying it was a security
>matter. A USAir spokeswoman, however, declined to comment, saying that the
>airline's security relationship with the federal transit agency was a security
>matter and that discussing it could "jeopardize passenger safety."
>
>Steigman declined to say who was on the no-fly list, but he conceded 
>that people
>like Lawinger, Stuber, Gordon, Adams and Olshansky were not "threats to
>aviation," because they were being allowed to fly after being interrogated and
>searched. But then, in a Byzantine twist, he raised the possibility that the
>security agency might have more than one list. "I checked with our security
>people," he said, "and they said there is no [second] list," he said. "Of
>course, that could mean one of two things: Either there is no second list, or
>there is a list and they're not going to talk about it for security reasons."
>
>In fact, most of those who have been stopped from boarding flights(like
>Lawinger, Stuber, Gordon and Adams) were able to fly later. Obviously, if the
>TSA thought someone was a genuine "threat to aviation" -- like those on the
>1,000-name no-fly list, they would simply be barred from flying. So does the
>agency have more than one list perhaps -- one for people who are 
>totally barred
>from flying and another for people who are simply harassed and delayed?
>
>Asked why the TSA would be barring a 74-year-old nun from flying, 
>Steigman said:
>"I don't know. You could get on the list if you were arrested for a federal
>felony."
>
>Sister Lawinger says she was arrested only once, back in the 1980s, 
>for sitting
>down and refusing to leave the district office of a local 
>congressman. And even
>then, she says, she was never officially charged or fined. But another person
>who was in the Peace Action delegation that day, Judith Williams, says she was
>arrested and spent three days in jail for a protest at the White House back in
>1991. In that protest, Williams and other Catholic peace activists had scaled
>the White House perimeter fence and scattered baby dolls around the lawn to
>protest the bombing of Iraq. She says that the charge from that incident was a
>misdemeanor, an infraction that would not seem enough to establish her as a
>threat to aviation.
>
>Inevitably, such questions about how one gets on a federal transit 
>list creates
>questions about how to get off it. It is a classic -- and unnerving 
>-- catch-22:
>Because the Transportation Security Administration says it compiles the list
>from names provided by other agencies, it has no procedure for correcting a
>problem. Aggrieved parties would have to go to the agency that first reported
>their names, but for security reasons, the TSA won't disclose which agency put
>someone on the list.
>
>Bresson, the FBI spokesperson, would not explain the criteria for classifying
>someone as a threat to aviation, but suggests that fliers who 
>believe they're on
>the list improperly should "report to airport security and they should be able
>to contact the TSA or us and get it cleared up." He concedes that might mean
>missed flights or other inconveniences. His explanation: "Airline security has
>gotten very complicated."
>
>Many critics of the security agency's methods accept the need for 
>heightened air
>security, but remain troubled the more Kafka-esque traits of the 
>system. Waters,
>at the Eagle Forum, worries that the government has offered no explanation for
>how a "threat to aviation" is determined. "Maybe the people being stopped are
>already being profiled," she says. "If they're profiling people, what kind of
>things are they looking for? Whether you fit in in your neighborhood?"
>
>"I agree that the government should be keeping known 'threats to aviation' off
>of planes," Ibish says. "I certainly don't want those people on my plane! But
>there has to be a procedure for appealing this, and there isn't. There are no
>safeguards and there is no recourse."
>
>Meanwhile, nobody in the federal government has explained why so many law-
>abiding but mostly left-leaning political activists and antiwar activists are
>being harassed at check-in time at airports. "This all raises serious concerns
>about whether the government has made a decision to target Americans based on
>their political beliefs," says Katie Corrigan, an ACLU official. The ACLU has
>set up a No Fly List Complaint Form on its Web site.
>
>One particular concern about the government's threat to aviation list and any
>other possible lists of people to be subjected to extra security investigation
>at airports is that names are being made available to private companies -- the
>airlines and airport authorities -- charged with alerting security personnel.
>Unlike most other law-enforcement watch lists, these lists are not 
>being closely
>held within the national security or law-enforcement files and computers, but
>are apparently being widely dispersed.
>
>"It's bad enough when the federal government has lists like this with no
>guidelines on how they're compiled or how to use them," says Olshansky at the
>Center for Constitutional Rights. "But when these lists are then given to the
>private sector, there are even less controls over how they are used 
>or misused."
>Noting that airlines have "a free hand" to decide whether someone can board a
>plane or not, she says the result is a "tremendous chilling of the First
>Amendment right to travel and speak freely."
>
>But Olshansky, alarmed by her own experience and the number of 
>others reporting
>apparent political harassment, is fighting back. She says now that the
>government has confirmed the existence of a blacklist, her center is 
>planning a
>First Amendment lawsuit against the federal government. CCR and has already
>signed up Lawinger, Stuber, and several others from Milwaukee's Peace Action
>group.
>
>####
>
>Center For Constitutional Rights
>http://www.ccr-ny.org/
>
>
>
>
>
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>322


-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu