This article originally appeared on the website
of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the NNPA.
In the language of George Orwell’s double speak, war
is peace, truth is lies.
And 2006 is 1984.
In today’s post-9/11 environment, Big Brother’s prying eyes peer
into your phone records, your Internet conversations and the intimate
transactions of your life. And thought crime, by the reckoning of
some legal and law enforcement experts, is apparently a punishable
offense.
While the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney General’s office
touted last week’s FBI bust of the Miami Seven as a significant
victory in the war on terror, critics of the government’s methods
have suggested the raid was part of a “pre-emptive” criminal justice
policy that presumes guilt before the fact.
These same critics have suggested that
the Miami Seven, or the Seas of David, as they called themselves,
were nothing more than a bunch of loudmouth bozos who went around
spouting anti-American rhetoric, and whose plan to blow up the Sears
Tower in Chicago was hatched and encouraged by an FBI informant
posing as an al-Qaida operative.
So now the question becomes, were these
men entrapped?
Is dissent a tangible criminal offense?
And if so, where is the hue and cry from the various human and civil
rights groups, like the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union?
“There are groups like the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist
organizations that recruit over the Internet and talk loudly about
taking certain actions,” said former FBI counter-terrorist special
agent Tyrone Powers.
“Shouldn’t they be charged under the same statutes as the Miami
Seven?”
John White, director of communications for the national office of
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
said the organization has contacted its office in Miami to get a
feel for the situation there. But so far, White said, there has
been no hue and cry from anyone regarding the case.
“It’s premature,” said White, “for us to have a take on this.”
The ACLU, saying they weren’t familiar enough yet with the case
to comment, suggested the National Association of Criminal Defense
Lawyers might be able to help.
“I read the (federal) indictment his
morning,” said Jack King, an attorney with the Washington, D.C.-based
lawyers’ group. “It was so thin, it was unbelievable.”
King likens the Miami Seven to the 1968 Panther 21 case in which
New York Black Panther Party members were indicted  on
charges of plotting to blow up the New York Botanical Gardens and
several department stores.
King called the Panther case a classic example of police infiltration
and frame – up linked to COINTELPRO, the government’s ’60s-era program
designed to disrupt domestic dissent.
“The Panther 21, unlike the Oakland (Calif.) Panthers, were slackers
who were infiltrated by a rookie cop. The cop was the only one plotting
to do anything. Those guys were totally and completely inept.”
King said the Panther 21 were held without
bond for 25 months before being acquitted by a New York jury after
45 minutes of deliberations.
“These guys in Miami, all they did was talk,” said King. “They marched
around the neighborhood in fatigues. They were eccentric and different
and somebody called the cops and dropped a dime on them.
“But one look at the indictment and you know,” King said. “It looks
like these guys were never going to do anything.”
The Seas of David has been portrayed as a cult that professed to
a convoluted doctrine of Christianity loosely sprinkled with a seasoning
of pseudo-Islamic dogma.
The gang made no secret about their discontent with some U.S. policies.
That made them conspicuous in the dangerous Miami ghetto of Liberty
City, where weary neighbors are constantly on the alert.
It was that conspicuousness which brought them the unwanted attention
of the authorities.
In a federal indictment, the Miami Seven were charged with conspiring
with al-Qaida to “levy war against the United States, and to oppose
by force the authority thereof” by committing acts of violence,
including blowing up the Sears Tower and destroying the FBI building
in Miami.
U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta of the Southern District of Florida
said, “… the group had the intent and took several steps toward
fulfilling their plan of blowing up the Sears Tower and the Miami
FBI building. They were never able to obtain, however, the explosives
or access needed to implement their plan.”
However, an article appearing in Time Magazine article suggests
the group’s ringleader never asked the informant/faux al-Qaida operative
for explosives.
Instead, Time said, the group requested “… $50,000, radios, uniforms
and steel-toed boots. Was the plan to blow up the Sears Tower or
kick it down?”
By their own accounts, law enforcement officials have characterized
the Miami Seven as the proverbial “gang that couldn’t shoot straight,”
an inept bunch who were not positioned financially, logistically
or tactically to pull off anything resembling a real act of terror.
FBI deputy director John Pistole called
the group “more aspirational than operational.”
Powers said the Miami Seven conspirators were not in any sense an
al-Qaida sleeper cell.
“This is a publicity case, “ said Powers. “Essentially, they have
a group of guys having a conversation. But once you take one step
toward bringing an act to fruition, you can be charged.
“The problem with the case is, (the group) never had any contact
with an al-Qaida official,” Powers said.
“The big catch is not seven guys in Florida, it is seven guys in
Florida having a conversation with an al-Qaida official. An informant
doesn’t count. At best, you have criminal conspiracy and the FBI
knows it.
“These guys’ mission, “ he continued, “was rhetorical.”
Powers said that under the present “pre-emptive” philosophy of criminal
justice, there are a lot of groups and organizations that could
be charged criminally.
Powers added that any group contemplating civil disobedience could
now be placed in the FBI’s files.
An official at the FBI office in Miami said he had no further comment
on the matter beyond the indictment handed down by the U.S. Attorney
General’s office.
However, the U.S. Department of Justice was not reticent to talk
about it at all.
“We’re not in the position to rate the seriousness of the threat,”
said Justice Department spokesman Brian Sierra. “Our job is to address
criminal conduct.
“The defendants conspired to provide their services and material
support to al-Qaida. If there are persons conspiring to co-operate
with al-Qaida, that is a crime,” Sierra said. “If the facts bear
out there was a crime, it doesn’t matter if their fingers were on
the trigger. In fact, if that’s the case, it’s often too late.”
Greg Miller, a former federal prosecutor, said he believed there
were questionable issues attendant to the raid and subsequent arrests.
“Some things struck me as odd,” Miller
said. “(Seas of David) didn’t appear to have taken significant steps
to further the alleged plot.
“There are many people who are around friends who grumble and say
a lot of things about their disenchantment with government policies.
We have to be concerned with the investigative policies of the government
that when people are blowing off steam, it is turned into a crime.”
Miller said the Miami Seven defense will likely allege entrapment,
but it will be difficult to prove.
“The government,” said Miller, “will try to show predisposition
to commit a crime. But in our efforts to ferret out terrorists,
we have to be careful not to overreact and abridge the people’s
Constitutional rights. Those rights cannot be stepped on in order
to fight terrorism.
“If this case boils down to a bunch of people sitting around complaining,”
Miller continued, “then the system has a problem.”
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