In the name of the “war on terror” the Bush administration
has upset American businesses and consumers with color-coded alerts
and has inconvenienced innocent travelers with unwarranted security
checks at airports. Even Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Edward Kennedy,
probably one of America’s most recognizable politicians, was stopped
repeatedly at airports earlier this year while trying to board
planes between Boston and Washington, DC because, according to
the August
20 Washington Post, the alias “T. Kennedy” was used by someone
on an FBI “no-fly” list. A person on a no fly list is prevented
from boarding a commercial airliner or may be subject to interrogation
when traveling by air. Now non-profit organizations, also, have become
targets for the government’s strong-arm tactics, as a result
of a new certification that was put into effect last October,
requiring organizations
participating in a federal charity drive to check who they employ
and who they give money to against government terrorist watch lists.
The Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) allows
federal employees and military personnel to donate to charities
of their choice through
payroll deductions. The drive is conducted once a year under a
single umbrella. In order to be listed in the CFC’s brochure, charitable
organizations must fill out an application certifying that they
meet all eligibility requirements to be included on the list. In
October of last year the CFC sent a memo to applicants for 2004,
informing them that “all charities...must now certify that they
do not knowingly employ individuals or have ties to organizations
found on any terrorist related list promulgated by the U.S. Government
or other international sources.”
The certification refers to three terrorist
watch lists: the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control Specially Designated
Nationals and Blocked Persons list, the Department of Justice’s
Terrorist Exclusion List, and the list annexed to Executive Order
13224. Links to these documents are provided on the Website of
the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the CFC.
The Executive Order lists 27 names of Islamic
organizations such as “Al Qaida” and individuals such as “Usama bin Laden.” The Terrorist
Exclusion List has 47 organizations, which includes those with
leftist, as well Islamic leanings – groups such as “Japanese Red
Army,” “Revival of Islamic Heritage Society” and “Al-Hamati Sweets
Bakeries” (The U.S. government believes the last, a business located
in Yemen, to be a Qaida front). The list of Specially Designated
Nationals and Blocked Persons contains thousands of names of organizations
and individuals. Quickly scanning through the file that I downloaded
to my computer, I could see that most of the names were
Arabic. Spanish names appeared to be a distant second.
How were charities supposed to respond to the new requirement?
The memo said local and national federations (groups of voluntary
charitable human health and welfare organizations established for
purposes of supplying common fundraising, administrative, and management
services to its members) must verify their list of member charities
against the published lists. Organizations not affiliated with
a federation, the memo said, would be reviewed against the published
lists. But nothing in the memo said anything about what charities
are supposed to do when they hire people.
The American Civil Liberties Union, on its 2004 application for
CFC participation, checked off the certification. However, at a
contentious board meeting on July 9, several board members complained
of the inconsistency of certifying that it would not knowingly
employ anyone on a government terrorist watch list, while filing
suit against the use of government no fly lists.
In an article in the July 31 New York Times
the ACLU’s executive
director, Anthony D. Romero, admitted never having consulted the
terrorist lists. His argument basically was: if he didn’t know
who was on the lists, then he could not “knowingly employ” terrorists.
Romero’s claim of willful ignorance on the part of the ACLU was
met with an admonition from CFC director Mara T. Patermaster, who
said in that same article that “if an organization is found to
falsely certify their eligibility for inclusion, they could be
ruled temporarily ineligible for inclusion or they could be permanently
excluded.” Patermaster, who signed the October, 2003 CFC
memo notifying applicants about the new certification, has
been head of the CFC since June, 1999. She said that charities
were fully expected to review the lists. On the same day that her
quote appeared in the newspaper, Romero sent her a letter informing
her of the ACLU’s withdrawal from the program rather than accepting
her terms.
I took a look at the 2002 Combined Federal
Campaign National List – the
most recent list of participants publicly available. I placed calls
to several organizations that I recognized as supporters of black
and liberal causes, including 100 Black Men of America, Association
of Black Psychologists, Joint Center for Political and Economic
Studies, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, National Association
of Black Social Workers, National Black United Fund, National Conference
of Black Lawyers, National Council of Negro Women, National Urban
League, Planned Parenthood Foundation, Southern Poverty Law Center
and United Negro College Fund.
I wanted to know whether organizations had set out specific rules
or guidelines for complying with the certification. Who in the
organization would be expected to review the lists? Has that person
downloaded the lists from the CFC's Website? If a charity participated
in the program and agreed to comply with the certification, would
that mean that each and every applicant for employment would be
screened against the lists? If an applicant's name appeared on
the list or was similar to a name on the list, how would the organization
proceed? Could the applicant be rejected for employment based on
the list? Would the applicant have to be informed that his/her
application was rejected for that reason? Would the organization
have to notify authorities?
With only a few exceptions, I was unable to get through to anyone
I could speak to on the matter. Not surprisingly, few for whom
I had left messages called me back. One who did, Liselle York,
communications director at the Joint Center for Political and Economic
Studies in Washington, DC, said that her organization did sign
the certification, but it has not hired anyone new this year, so
there has been no need to consult the terrorist lists. She said
the donation the Joint Center received through the CFC amounted
to less than three percent of its budget.
The New York-based NAACP Legal Defense Fund
directed me to its public relations office in DC, McKinney and
Associates. Its response
was that the Defense Fund was going “to pass” on the question of
the CFC certification, although subsequently it joined the ACLU
and 14 other organizations in a coalition,
formed in mid-August, to protest the new policy.
J. Richard Cohen, president and CEO of the
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery, Ala., said
that he really didn’t how
his organization was dealing with the change, but his guess was
that whoever filled out the application probably checked off the
certification without actually consulting any list. “I promise
you, it hasn’t gotten to my level,” he said.
Anyone who visits the SPLC’s
Website can see that it has multiple channels for receiving
donations. However, for many smaller charitable organizations,
the federal-employee check-off might very well be their lifeblood.
Understandably, they would not want to jeopardize their ability
to participate in the CFC program by stating that they do not
comply with the certification.
A friend of mine who works for one of the CFC
participating organizations (and who agreed to talk to me on
the condition of anonymity) maintained
that since smaller charities hire only people known within their
network and already perform the requisite checks – through references
and other means – there was no need to consult terrorist watch
lists. “We’re not going to hire Mousawi,” this person said, referring
to Zakariah Mousawi, who the U.S. government claims was an intended
9/11 hijacker and who is now in U.S. custody.
According to my friend, a discussion of the
issue with others who worked within some of the more progressive
organizations – women’s
rights funds, funds for social change – led to the general consensus
that the CFC’s certification was a pointless, misunderstood effort
to combat terrorism and that it would place an undue burden on
organizations.
OMB Watch, a Washington-based non-profit that monitors
the activities of the White House Office of Management and Budget,
issued a statement calling
on the CFC to “change its misguided policy.” The group, a participant
in the federal fundraising drive and a member of the dissenting
coalition of non-profits, says in its statement that following
Patermaster’s directive would “force America’s charities to act
as police investigators and enforcers... Nonprofits may become
reluctant – even if unconsciously – to hire minorities, especially
those who appear to be Islamic or of Middle-Eastern descent, or
whose names sound like people who might be on the blacklist.”
On August 17, Romero wrote an op-ed piece for
the Washington Post – including
a cautionary anecdote about the ramifications of terrorist watch
lists. You see, he – known to family and some friends as Antonio
Romero – has the same name as someone on the Specially Designated
Nationals and Blocked Persons list. “What if the ACLU had checked
my name against the watch lists and found the name of Antonio Romero?
If it hired the Antonio Romero targeted by the government, knowingly
or not, the ACLU would open itself up to civil or criminal sanctions,” Romero
writes. “So the stakes are high.”
Indeed. The loss to the ACLU, however, was
relatively small – about
$500,000 out of their annual budget of over $100 million. And,
as my friend speculated, by taking a stand against the CFC’s requirement,
the ACLU will probably attract more donations from other sources.
It would be easy for any charity accepting funds through the CFC
to quietly check off the certification and continue getting the
money. They don’t all have a reputation of fighting McCarthyite
attacks on civil liberties to protect. But now that Patermaster
has thrown down the gauntlet and made the acceptance of CFC donations
a question of principle, organizations that support liberal causes
are the most likely to suffer. If they follow the ACLU’s lead and
bow out of the CFC program, that could leave millions of federal
workers and military men and women without an easy, convenient
way of channeling money to their favorite charities. Whether charities
make hiring decisions based on terrorist lists or not, it’s just
one more way the Bush administration has exploited the events of
9/11 to keep its political opponents in line.
Patrice D. Johnson is a writer living in New York City. |