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WAR ON TERRORISM RELIES ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

Kazi Touré, New England Regional Office Criminal Justice Program Co-Coordinator, Cambridge, MA

Photo: J. Spencer

Much of the language being used by politicians lately involves discussions of "security" and "safety." The fear everyone felt after September 11 has allowed the passage of a number of acts, such as the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act; the creation of the Department of Homeland Security; and the Terrorist Information & Prevention System (TIPS). What many people don't realize is how heavily the government is relying on the criminal justice system in its "war against terrorism," nor how dangerous that is.

In a country that was built on slave labor, stolen lands, genocide-and whose economy is still supported by exploitation, racial stratification, and the growth of inequality-we must look at this inequality and the devices used to support that imbalanced system.

The ruling class has always recognized police forces, prison guards, imprisonment, and counterinsurgency operations as necessary tools to protect the system from economic crimes that grow from life under oppression and the direct actions of people trying to get more of a fair share.

In the period before September 11, police forces in the United States had already been receiving gradual boosts of power, including an increase in powers of arrest and ability to crackdown on political dissidents.(1) And the tremendous police force expansion has not only occurred in the United States.

From its post World War II beginnings up until the mid-1970s, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency illegally spied on Americans, despite the fact that the CIA's own charter prohibits its engagement in domestic law enforcement or internal security functions. Created to conduct foreign intelligence operations for the U.S. government, the CIA had its heyday during the Cold War, fighting America's public enemy number one, "Communism." Now the buzzword is "terrorism."

In the 1960s and 1970s, both the FBI (mainly through its counterintelligence programs, or COINTELPRO) and the CIA spied on dissident groups within the country and without, surveilling, disrupting, and destroying groups and people who organized and spoke out against U.S. foreign and domestic policy, as well as people who led liberation struggles in third world countries.

Laws were created to reign in both organizations when their counterinsurgency operations came to light. Now, however, in the name of fighting "terrorism," President George Bush has declared that he has given the CIA the "green light to do whatever is necessary," including "lethal operations" that are already underway.(2)

Attorney General John Ashcroft has announced a plan to relax restrictions on the FBI's spying on religious and political organizations in the United States; this plan specifically mentions the revival of the COINTELPRO. With the USA PATRIOT Act, the government has given the CIA back its role in domestic counterintelligence, now with legal backing. This, combined with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, according to War Times Magazine, "will consolidate a myriad of agencies into a new cabinet-level bureaucracy dedicated to domestic spying and repression."

In an Orwellian twist, the Bush administration has called for millions of Americans to report "suspicious and potentially terrorist-related activity" to police under TIPS. While originally intended to include all kinds of workers who have access to people's homes, the administration is currently only recruiting workers who work on highways, public transportation, and ports of entry. Still, it is a frightening forecast for the shift of creating a private sector police vigilante force that will increase the reach of the criminal justice system many times over.

We have already seen thousands of Arab, Middle Eastern, and Muslim people detained in an orchestrated effort by the Immigration and Naturalization Service and FBI, and these individuals are being held in normal penitentiaries. In addition, they are not even given the right to confidentiality with their lawyers, as the Justice Department has given prison officials permission to listen in.

One of the most dangerous situations was the case of Jose Pedilla, a U.S. citizen whom President Bush designated an "enemy combatant" and threw into military detention indefinitely, without due process, a trial, or even formal charges. This is a case that could happen to anyone, especially with the institution of TIPS. These recent shifts in law directly affect us-especially people who are opposed to the war on terrorism and a war in Iraq, people who speak out about the growth of the prison industrial complex, those who call for an end to the death penalty and other violent acts by the state. And it is important for us who work or are interested in the field of criminal justice to recognize and call attention to the ways the criminal justice system is being used to further these policies.

(1) Scher, Aber. "The Crackdown on Dissent," The Nation, January 19, 2001
(2) Tanenhaus, Sam. "The CIA's Blind Ambition," Vanity Fair, January 2002

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