By John Kiriakou
Special to Consortium News
All of us who care about civil liberties, civil rights, human rights and freedom of the press have had a front-row seat lately to a slide toward what can only be described as authoritarianism. The governments of the U.S., U.K. and even Canada have been working hard, sometimes in a coordinated fashion, to silence dissenting voices. The governments’ tactics have been heavy-handed, to say the least.
Most recently, journalist Richard Medhurst was arrested last week by British authorities. Richard, who is one of the loudest and most important voices in support of human rights for Palestinians, was arrested at Heathrow Airport.
Detaining a journalist is not terribly unusual in the U.K., unfortunately. What usually happens is that the journalist is held for several hours, his phone and laptop are taken from him, he is given a variety of threats that he must appear to answer questions at some future date, and he’s eventually released. Things were different for Richard, however.
Our colleague Chris Hedges wrote,
“After being taken into custody by six police officers, having his electronic equipment seized, and then questioned, he was placed in solitary confinement for almost 24 hours. He was released on pre-charge bail. He will remain under investigation for at least three months and he faces the prospect of being charged with an offense that could carry a prison sentence of up to 14 years.”
And what is the charge that Richard is facing? It’s terrorism. He is being threatened with a charge under Section 12 of the U.K.’s Terrorism Act for his reporting.
Richard Medhurst is not, of course, a terrorist. He’s a journalist working to publish the truth on the ground in Gaza. There are a lot of Western governments that simply don’t like that.
Medhurst on his X feed on Aug. 19, announcing details of his arrest. (X)
Here in the United States, The New York Times reported last week that the Justice Department has begun an investigation into employees of RT, formerly known as Russia Today. RT America ceased to exist more than a year ago.
But a lot of Americans, including this writer, often appear on RT International via Zoom to comment on global developments, like the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and on U.S. elections.
Former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who is a frequent RT guest and has said publicly that he occasionally writes op-eds for RT.com for $150 per article, had his house raided by more than a dozen FBI agents and a local SWAT team, apparently for his work with RT and for the gall of trying to travel to Moscow to sit on a panel at an academic event about Ukraine.
Scott never made it to Moscow. His passport was seized before he could depart, and he was taken off the plane.
In an impromptu press conference immediately after the raid on his house, Scott opined that the raid was part of a Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) case that the Justice Department may be trying to build against him.
Why? As with Richard Medhurst, the government doesn’t like his politics, and it especially doesn’t like the fact that he’s public about his position on the Ukraine war.
[See: SCOTT RITTER: A Farewell to Truth]
Tulsi Gabbard on Terror Watch List
Earlier this month, a TSA whistleblower reported that a former Democratic congresswoman and former presidential candidate, Tulsi Gabbard, had been placed on the Department of Homeland Security’s terrorist watch list.
Gabbard told journalist Matt Taibbi that she and her husband are routinely given boarding passes with the “SSSS” security moniker on them, they are pulled into secondary screening, which takes as long as 45 minutes, and that she has encountered “multiple obstacles” on recent trips to Dallas, Austin, Nashville, Orlando and Atlanta.
Gabbard addressing the 2019 California Democratic Party state convention in San Francisco. (Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)
The TSA whistleblower added that federal air marshals, sometimes as many as three of them, were assigned to fly on all flights that Gabbard was on, a ridiculous, infuriating, and irrational waste of the taxpayers’ money.
Several members of Congress and the entire Hawaii legislature are now demanding that TSA Director David Pekoske explain himself.
Last October, journalist, human rights whistleblower, and former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray was arrested at Glasgow Airport in Scotland upon returning home from a meeting in Iceland that I had also attended. After interrogating him about his political beliefs, the police seized Craig’s laptop and cell phone.
Most of the questions Craig was forced to answer were about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. He was also grilled about a pro-Palestine rally at which he had spoken in Reykjavik.
Like Richard Medhurst, Craig was interrogated under the U.K.’s draconian Terrorism Act. He was later released, but he has possible terrorism charges hanging over his head, and he has no idea why.
Trip to Greece
In my own case, I recently traveled to Greece at the invitation of a think tank there to talk about the situation in the Middle East. The Greeks rolled out the red carpet for me, and I ended up visiting five different think tanks, each associated with the major political parties represented in the Parliament.
The Greeks paid my expenses, which included a flight from Washington to Athens through New York. The return trip was from Athens to Washington through Toronto.
As it so happens, I am banned for life from Canada because I’m a “dangerous felon,” having blown the whistle on the C.I.A.’s torture program. Canada is a so-called Five Eyes country.
The United States, Canada, the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand, which make up the Five Eyes, share criminal justice information with each other, and any citizen of one who has been convicted of a felony — any felony — and sentenced to 18 months in prison or more, is automatically banned from entering the other Five Eyes.
Rendering of the “Five Eyes” intelligence network that includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., the U.S. (@GDJ, Openclipart)
I didn’t think that was going to be a problem because I was simply transiting Toronto. I wasn’t actually entering Canada. When the plane landed in Toronto, I filed out like everybody else.
The moment I stepped off the plane, though, two members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or Mounties, grabbed me by the arms and said, “Come with us.” To make a long story short, those were the only words they spoke to me.
They wouldn’t answer a single question. They didn’t even look at me. Instead, they took me to my connecting flight, still holding my arms, put me on the next plane, and finally left. I was clearly not welcome in Canada.
But the story doesn’t end there. When I arrived in Washington, Customs and Border Patrol officers stopped me and questioned me. Where did I go? Why was I there? With whom did I meet? What are their addresses and phone numbers? (Seriously). I finally told them that I was represented by counsel and wasn’t answering any more questions.
They told me that they could hold me for days if they wanted. I told them that was nonsense and that there was no legal way that they could keep me from re-entering my own country. Forty-five minutes later, they let me go.
There’s no good news in these stories. This is the future, unless we stand up to fight it.
The loss of civil liberties is almost always incremental. But I, for one, don’t want to answer to whomever happens to be in the White House or at the Department of Homeland Security or in the CEO position at Facebook or Twitter or Google. I won’t do it. And I won’t justify my politics to anybody.
We have rights. And we have to force our elected officials to force those who would take those rights away from us to respect the Constitution. This is a fight worth fighting.
John Kiriakou is a former C.I.A. counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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