The War at Home-Security and Terrorism
Volk, Steven
One of the first acts of the new Republican-dominated Senate Judiciary Committee was to create a Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism. This article, written by a NACLA staff member,...
...Larry McDonald (D-Ga...
...Even before the SST was formed, rumors coming from the office of soon-to-be SST member Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) hinted that at least three U.S...
...has once again introduced legislation to recreate the old House Internal Security Committee (also known as HUAC...
...Given that the majority of terrorist attacks in the United States in the past three to five years have come from right-wing Cuban exiles (who recently assassinated a Cuban diplomat in Queens, New York) and their friends in the Chilean security apparatus (responsible for the 1976 murder of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington, D.C...
...The FARA could be used to harass the many international solidarity organizations currently working in the United States...
...update...
...Tying this retrogressive package together is the great fear Candidate Reagan kicked this off by blindly stating that, "the Soviet Union underlies all the unrest that is going on" in the world...
...with the very strong message that hardwon victories will not be easily taken away...
...It is occasionally associated with famous people-Billy Carter was prosecuted under the act by Lisker for not registering as an agent of the Libyan government-or with public relations firms representing foreign governments...
...The SST has a role to play in bringing this war home...
...Orrin Hatch (R-Utah...
...Who Are the Targets...
...the increase in racist attacks in the cities from Atlanta to Buffalo and official government pronouncements that affirmative action is dead...
...Individuals and organizations which are fully within their First Amendment rights to free speech, press, assembly and dissent are smeared and hounded by congressional committees bent on their destruction...
...The FBI didn't help much, placing "terrorism" seventeenth on its list of concerns and arguing that terrorist attacks in the United States had declined over the past three years...
...After a few brief skirmishes with the FBI in which the subcommittee tried to prove that the Justice Department should be more concerned with these matters, it fully entered the campaign on April 24...
...under increasing KGB control," but, he testified, there was "irrefutable proof" that the Soviet Union was playing a "covert role in promoting the anti-nuclear lobby" in the United States...
...Sterling dismissed this by arguing that the CIA suffered from an "unwillingness to face certain political realities which are unpleasant...
...organizations should be investigated...
...To the rescue came Jeane Kirkpatrick, U.S...
...Dan Crane (R-lll...
...But the content of the attack remains the same...
...How was the Reagan Administration to distance its allies (and, indeed, the Government itself) from the charge of "terrorism...
...update * update directed violence as long as it is practiced by "our friends," Ernest Lefever, nominated director of the State Department's Human Rights Office, opposed moralizing about the use of torture in Argentina and Chile because, however deplorable, it was a "residual practice of Iberian traditions...
...Thus, by the flick of a definition, terrorism had become rampant...
...Ambassador to the United Nations...
...They're not...
...On the agenda was a broadly ranging discussion of terrorism and the Soviet Union...
...The testimony was largely a rehash of the witnesses' previous pronouncements, but de Borchgrave managed to rouse the audience from boredom with the startling accusation that Mobilization for Survival, a broad-based antinuclear, anti-arms race group was linked with the Soviet Union and, hence, international terrorism...
...Registration under this act gives the government a very broad right to know where your money comes from and exactly how it is spent...
...Whether they are successful depends largely on the extent of popular opposition to these measures...
...gavelled to order the newly formed Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism (SST...
...What's in a Name...
...Terrorism and "Our Friends" Yet while the Administration's semantic gymnastics solved one problem for those who saw terrorism as rampant, it created another...
...Such a definition would label most wars of national liberation and anti-colonial wars as terrorist acts, quite in contradiction to generally accepted United Nations' standards...
...Support for this campaign has come from Rep...
...Clearly warming to the task, de Borchgrave charged in to link the Mobilization for Survival (MFS) to the Soviet Union...
...In its previous reports on terrorism, the CIA had never found more than 188 international terrorist attacks in any one year...
...This article, written by a NACLA staff member, examines the subcommittee and the threat it poses to NACLA and all progressive organizations...
...the challenge to minimum wage laws which (minimally) protect working people and an economic package which will assuredly increase unemployment...
...de Borchgrave was of little concern to the former Newsweek correspondent...
...Nor has the subcommittee, in turning to foreign affairs, shown any interest in state-directed violence which plagues the people of Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, South Korea, Haiti and so forth...
...That MFS, the U.S...
...Sour Wine in New Bottles Taking its cue from Reagan and Haig, the SST is bent on "proving" two points: first, the Soviet Union is behind all terrorism in the world...
...One didn't have to wait until the April 24 hearings to see that the real targets of the Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism were the domestic political opponents of the Reagan-Haig world view...
...The vague and expansive focus of the SST-according to Denton, the subcommittee "will hold hearings bearing on matters relating to terrorist activities and to national security matters"-makes it a direct descendant of the late House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC), the Senate Internal Security Committee (the "Eastland Committee") and the Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee (Joseph McCarthy's favored forum...
...Just consider what we have experienced in the first four months of 1981: the escalation of U.S...
...Left virtually undefined are the concepts of "propaganda and other activities" and "foreign principals...
...Nor is it a coincidence that the real power of the subcommittee, its Chief Counsel, is Joel Lisker, an exFBI agent who is considered an expert on prosecutions under the Foreign Agent's Registration Act (FARA...
...The fact that at least one such group in California has recently been threatened by the Justice Department under the provisions of the FARA leads us to argue that the threat is real...
...By so broadening the definition of "terrorism," the word manipulators had inadvertently encompassed not only those movements for social change which resort to armed struggle, but a much more serious threat to peace: states which systematically employ violence to stamp out all opposition and dissent...
...Now they are called "terrorists...
...If one is to believe Crane and McDonald, the "terrorists are plotting subversive attacks right under our noses...
...Arch witch hunter Rep...
...More seriously, the subcommittee hearings gave the lie to those who have argued that the SST would not become a modern-day HUAC...
...What remains in question is precisely how far the subcommittee will go in its efforts to stifle dissent...
...According to Anthony C.E...
...Its text states that public registration as a foreign agent is required of "persons engaging in propaganda activities and other activities for or on behalf of foreign governments, foreign political parties, and other foreign principals...
...He needs your help in closing America's 'open door' to bombthrowers, spies and revolutionaries...
...From this semantic swampland, she dredged out the concept of the "moderately repressive regime"-by which, perhaps, we are to understand regimes which, when torturing their opponents, break one arm of the victim instead of both...
...Heritage, though, went Hatch a step better, arguing that the SST should investigate "clergymen, students, businessmen, entertainers, labor officials, journalists and government workers [who] may engage in subversive activities without being fully aware of the extent, purpose or control of their activities...
...support to the Salvadorean junta which moves us closer to a land war in Central America...
...Even though the Democrats control committee appointments in the House, the conservative tide threatens to wash over that body as well...
...By selecting Sterling and de Borchgrave as witnesses, the subcommittee insisted on lending credibility to the thesis that the Soviet Union was behind all terrorist acts worldwide even though a recent CIA "draft estimate" concluded that there was insufficient evidence to substantiate these charges...
...Foreign Agent Registration Act It is no longer a question if the SST will be used to red-bait political opponents of the Reagan Administration...
...No matter...
...one would expect that investigations of such Cuban anti-Castro groups, as Omega 7 or Alpha 66 would be high on the SST's list of concerns...
...But the act is much broader than this implies...
...Early in his administration, President Reagan made it known that "international terrorism" would take the place of "human rights" as a priority concern...
...James Madison once noted that "it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger real or pretended from abroad...
...who recently wrote a letter for the Council for Inter-American Security which stressed that "Ronald Reagan needs your support now more than ever...
...It's an appeal by the frightened to the fears which have naturally sprung from a very troubled society...
...This 1938 act, later amended, is vague, threatening and hardly tested in the courts...
...There is terrorism in the world, but thus far the SST has been totally unconcerned with its real causes or dimensions and much more interested in using the issue as a springboard to deprive dissenters at home of their political rights...
...For Lisker and the SST, it would seem, national security demands the infiltration, harassment and disruption of dissenters...
...Not only was the "UN infrastructure...
...De Borchgrave had let slip the real purpose of the SST: to harass and smear political opponents of the Reagan Administration and its conservative allies...
...Richard Allen, Reagan's national security adviser, spoke with scorn of a "return of pacifism" in Europe, and berated the "allies" for spending on butter instead of guns...
...Senator John East, for example, SST member who also chairs the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Separation of Powers, recently began a series of hearings on abortion rights which were so biased that even committee member Orrin Hatch (another SST hardliner) was moved to protest...
...It is no coincidence that the Republican majority on the SST consists of three of the most reactionary senators in Congress: John East (R-NC), Jesse Helms' junior clone...
...Conservative Soap Boxes The Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism is but one example of a series of extremely conservative Senate committees which, having reached their conclusions before a single witness is heard, seek to use congressional forums to propagandize their rigidly narrow point of view...
...42 Peace Council and the others are perfectly legal groups entitled to the same First Amendment rights as Mr...
...Alexander Haig, Jr., in his first press conference as Secretary of State, warned that "international terrorism" had become "rampant...
...The Heritage Foundation, a major conservative supporter of the new Administration, suggests the targets should be not only "terrorist groups," but "the several Communist parties," and radical and new left groups including, again, NACLA, IPS, and Tom Hayden's Campaign for Economic Democracy...
...Chilling Effect Well, there is something going on under McDonald and Crane's noses, but it's not terrorism, and it smells much worse...
...the dramatic and unprecedented peacetime increase in the defense budget and the vicious slashing of all social services...
...This issue is not new, though the MaylJune 1981 words used to characterize the "threat" are...
...and second, the international terrorist threat is present at home in the guise of political dissenters...
...populace the belief that not only was terrorism on the rise worldwide, but that it directly affected the domestic tranquility of the United States...
...We will do everything we can," Lisker noted recently, "to modify and eliminate" the guidelines imposed in 1975 to restrict infilNACLA Reportupdate.update update update tration and surveillance of domestic groups and political dissidents...
...Peace Council which is tied to the World Peace Council which is tied to, etc., etc...
...For his part, Lisker makes no bones about desiring a return to the pre-Watergate days when the FBI and CIA had virtual free reign to disrupt the activities of political dissenters...
...the return of support for military dictatorships from Argentina to Guatemala...
...an ."Executive Order" which threatens to unleash the FBI at home and the CIA abroad and the move to vitiate the Freedom of Information Act...
...In earlier periods dissenters were branded as "communists," "labor agitators," "anarchists," or "foreigners...
...In the same vein, and with the same purpose of condoning state41update...
...Playing to the cameras and a national audience, de Borchgrave began to reveal Soviet terrorists under every bed...
...It already has...
...His tactics were vintage red-baiting: one of the several hundred organizations affiliated to the MFS is the U.S...
...Quainton, director of the State Department's "Office for Combatting Terrorism," the government is in the process of revising its definition of terrorism to include "threats" of violence as well as actual violence...
...The committee was treated to a full serving of testimony on Soviet sponsorship of international terrorism cooked up by Claire Sterling, author of The Terror Network, Arnaud de Borchgrave, of The Spike fame, and William Colby, lately of the CIA and Operation Phoenix, among others...
...On April 24, Senator Jeremiah Denton (R-Ala...
...It's the aggressive attempt of a reactionary minority, by playing off the majority's profound apathy and cynicism, to push back every shred of progressive social legislation on the books...
...This set the climate for Senate conservatives to argue for a subcommittee whose purpose was the investigation of "terrorism...
...Suddenly, it revised its 1980 figures upward to 760 by adopting a definition of terrorism which made it almost synonymous with political violence...
...What proved to be more difficult was foisting on the U.S...
...Just conjecture...
...We were more than a little surprised to learn that NACLA The anti-nuke movement, shown here at a May 1979 march on Washington, is among those targeted by the SSTi to IZ -J w NACLA Report 40update .update * update *update headed the Hatch hit-list, followed by Mother Jones, a highly respected investigative magazine, and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a Washington-based progressive research center which examines both domestic and international issues...
...Nor was this the only indication of the SST's true intent...
...And, in that, we can find some hope, for on May 3, nearly 100,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C...
...The SST Does Battle By April, the SST was ready to enter the battle against international "terrorists" and their domestic allies...
...Instead, we find that NACLA might be called before the committee...
...And our hands are tied by the liberals...
...and Denton...
...The CIA, under prodding from State, is also revising its definitions...
...Kirkpatrick divided the third world between "revolutionary autocracies" and "traditional authoritarian governments," arguing (without evidence) that the latter "are less repressive" than the former...
...Richard Pipes, a National Security Council staff member offered that there was "no alternative to war" with the Soviet Union if the Soviets did not abandon their political system...
...Perhaps this isn't new, but the vehemence with which the Senate committees have approached their task is mind-boggling...
Vol. 15 • May 1981 • No. 3
