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【题目】The Last Roundup 最后的围捕 (五）
【来源】《雷达》杂志
【链接】http://www.radaronline.com/from-the-magazine/2008/05/government_surveillance_homeland_security_main_core_01-print.php
【素材提供】Nicolle
【翻译】dakelv
【翻译方式】人工
【声明】此译文版权归Anti-CNN和译者共同拥有，转载请注明出处和译者。
【原文(5)】
In July 2007 and again last August, Representative Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon and a senior member of the House Homeland Security Committee, sought access to the "classified annexes" of the Bush administration's Continuity of Government program. DeFazio's interest was prompted by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20 (also known as NSPD-51), issued in May 2007, which reserves for the executive branch the sole authority to decide what constitutes a national emergency and to determine when the emergency is over. DeFazio found this unnerving.
But he and other leaders of the Homeland Security Committee, including Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, were denied a review of the Continuity of Government classified annexes. To this day, their calls for disclosure have been ignored by the White House. In a press release issued last August, DeFazio went public with his concerns that the NSPD-51 Continuity of Government plans are "extra-constitutional or unconstitutional." Around the same time, he told the Oregonian: "Maybe the people who think there's a conspiracy out there are right."
None of the leading presidential candidates have been asked the question, "As president, will you continue aggressive domestic surveillance programs in the vein of the Bush administration?"Congress itself has recently widened the path for both extra-constitutional detentions by the White House and the domestic use of military force during a national emergency. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 effectively suspended habeas corpus and freed up the executive branch to designate any American citizen an "enemy combatant" forfeiting all privileges accorded under the Bill of Rights. The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act, also passed in 2006, included a last-minute rider titled "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies," which allowed the deployment of U.S. military units not just to put down domestic insurrections—as permitted under posse comitatus and the Insurrection Act of 1807—but also to deal with a wide range of calamities, including "natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack, or incident."
More troubling, in 2002, Congress authorized funding for the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, which, according to Washington Post military intelligence expert William Arkin, "allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control."
"We are at the edge of a cliff and we're about to fall off," says constitutional lawyer and former Reagan administration official Bruce Fein. "To a national emergency planner, everybody looks like a danger to stability. There's no doubt that Congress would have the authority to denounce all this—for example, to refuse to appropriate money for the preparation of a list of U.S. citizens to be detained in the event of martial law. But Congress is the invertebrate branch. They say, 'We have to be cautious.' The same old crap you associate with cowards. None of this will change under a Democratic administration, unless you have exceptional statesmanship and the courage to stand up and say, 'You know, democracies accept certain risks that tyrannies do not.'"
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CREDIBLE WITNESS James Comey (Photo: Getty Images)
As of this writing, DeFazio, Thompson, and the other 433 members of the House are debating the so-called Protect America Act, after a similar bill passed in the Senate. Despite its name, the act offers no protection for U.S. citizens; instead, it would immunize from litigation U.S. telecom giants for colluding with the government in the surveillance of Americans to feed the hungry maw of databases like Main Core. The Protect America Act would legalize programs that appear to be unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, the mystery of James Comey's testimony has disappeared in the morass of election year coverage. None of the leading presidential candidates have been asked the questions that are so profoundly pertinent to the future of the country: As president, will you continue aggressive domestic surveillance programs in the vein of the Bush administration? Will you release the COG blueprints that Representatives DeFazio and Thompson were not allowed to read? What does it suggest about the state of the nation that the U.S. is now ranked by worldwide civil liberties groups as an "endemic surveillance society," alongside repressive regimes such as China and Russia? How can a democracy thrive with a massive apparatus of spying technology deployed against every act of political expression, private or public? (Radar put these questions to spokespeople for the McCain, Obama, and Clinton campaigns, but at press time had yet to receive any responses.)
These days, it's rare to hear a voice like that of Senator Frank Church, who in the 1970s led the explosive investigations into U.S. domestic intelligence crimes that prompted the very reforms now being eroded. "The technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny," Church pointed out in 1975. "And there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know."
UPDATE: Since this article went to press, several documents have emerged to suggest the story has longer legs than we thought. Most troubling among these is an October 2001 Justice Department memo that detailed the extra-constitutional powers the U.S. military might invoke during domestic operations following a terrorist attack. In the memo, John Yoo, then deputy assistant attorney general, "concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations." (Yoo, as most readers know, is author of the infamous Torture Memo that, in bizarro fashion, rejiggers the definition of "legal" torture to allow pretty much anything short of murder.) In the October 2001 memo, Yoo refers to a classified DOJ document titled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States." According to the Associated Press, "Exactly what domestic military action was covered by the October memo is unclear. But federal documents indicate that the memo relates to the National Security Agency's Terrorist Surveillance Program." Attorney General John Mukasey last month refused to clarify before Congress whether the Yoo memo was still in force.
Meanwhile, congressional sources tell Radar that Congressman Peter DeFazio has apparently abandoned his effort to get to the bottom of the White House COG classified annexes. Penny Dodge, DeFazio's chief of staff, says otherwise. "We will be sending a letter requesting a classified briefing soon," she told Radar this week.
【译文（5）】
(历史的教训：二战时美籍日本人被送到拘留营。)
2007年7月份和去年8月份，彼得·迪法吉奥议员 -- 一位来自俄勒冈州的民主党人士 -- 还有一位众议院国土安全委员会的高级成员，试图得到布什政府的继续执政计划里的“机密附件”。迪法吉奥的兴趣来源于国土安全部的“总统指令20”（又称为NSPD-51)。这项发表于2007年5月的指令规定行政部门有权决定国家何时进入、何时结束紧急状态。迪法吉奥觉得这有点令人感到不安。但是他和国土安全委员会的其他领导人，包括密西西比州民主党人、委员会主席伯尼·汤姆逊，的审查继续执政计划里的机密附件的要求都被拒绝了。直到今天，白宫仍然忽视他们公开此项附件的要求。在一份去年8月份发表的新闻稿中，迪法吉奥公开了自己的担忧，他认为NSPD-51继续执政计划是“凌驾宪法之上的，或者是违宪的。” 大约在同时，他对《俄勒冈人》报纸说，“也许那些认为有阴谋存在的人是对的。”
国会近期为白宫凌驾于宪法之上的拘捕做法以及国家紧急状态期间在国内动用武力的做法大开方便之门。2006年通过的《军事委员会法》有效地中止了人身保护法，使得行政部门有权把任何美国公民当作“敌方战斗人员”，并剥夺其人权法案规定的所有权利。也是在2006年通过的《约翰华纳国防授权法案》里包括一个最后一刻追加的条款，题为“在主要公共紧急状态下武力的使用”，这个条款不仅允许动用军队镇压国内叛乱（这个在1807年通过的地方民团和《叛乱法》中已经被允许），而且还允许在更广泛的灾难发生时动用军队，这些灾难包括：“自然灾害、瘟疫或者其他严重的公共卫生危机、恐怖袭击或意外事件。”
更令人不安的是，2002年，国会批准了对美国北方司令部（简称NORTHCOM）的资助。据《华盛顿邮报》军事情报专家 威廉·阿肯说，“【北方司令部】允许美军在不受地方监视和控制的情况下在美国本土采取紧急军事行动。”
“我们现在是如临深渊，一不小心就会掉下去，” 宪法律师和前里根政府官员布鲁斯·非恩说。“对于一个国家紧急计划的制定者来说，每个人看起来都会对国家稳定造成威胁。 毫无疑问，国会有权驳斥这些指控 --比如，拒绝拨款资助军管期间需要拘禁的美国公民的名单的搜集。但是国会是没有没有骨气的机构，他们会说，‘我们必须谨慎。’这也是胆小鬼常说的鬼话。在民主政权下，这些都不会改变，除非你有非凡的政治才干和勇气，站起来说，‘你知道吗，民主会冒一些独裁政权不愿冒的风险。’”
(可信的证人：詹姆斯·戈美)
在这篇文章成稿时，迪法吉奥，汤姆逊和众议院的其他433名成员正在争论所谓《保护美国法案》，类似的法案已经在参议院通过了。这个法案虽然名称里有保护美国的字样，其实它对美国公民没有提供任何保护；相反，它使得美国通讯巨擎能够配合政府监视美国人和向“主核”一类的嗷嗷待哺的数据库输送数据，而同时又免于受法律起诉的威胁。《保护美国法案》也将使看起来违宪的计划合法化。
同时，在美国大选年的报道中，詹姆斯·戈美的证词也丢失了。没有一个主要总统候选人被问及这个事关美国前途的问题，“如果你当选，你会不会继续布什政府的积极的国内监控计划？”你会不会公开迪法吉奥和汤姆逊议员不被允许阅读的继续执政的蓝图文件？美国现在和中国、俄罗斯等压制政体一起被全世界的平民自由团体称为“监控风行的社会”，这对于我们国家的状态意味着什么？如果大量的监控技术和设备被用来监视任何政治观点的表达，民主如何能兴盛？（《雷达》杂志把这些问题送交给凯恩、奥巴马和克林顿竞选活动的发言人，但是到此稿交印时仍未收到任何答复。)
参议院弗兰克·彻奇在1970年领导了关于美国国内情报犯罪的具有爆炸性的调查工作。调查的结果就是有关这方面的改革，而现在这个改革正受到侵蚀。当今像彻奇这样的声音已经很少见了。“情报机构为政府提供的技术能力足可以使政府具有实行专制的能力，” 彻奇在1975年支出。“而且，没有力量能够与此抵抗，因为任何联合起来对抗政府的行为，不管策划得多么仔细和隐秘，都在政府的掌控之下。
更新：自从这篇文章交印以后，几份浮出水面的文件显示这个故事远比我们想象的要复杂得多。其中最令人不安的是一份2001年司法部的备忘录。这份备忘录详细描述了恐怖袭击后的国内行动中美国军方可能拥有的超出宪法以外的权力。在这份备忘录中，前助理副司法部长 约翰·尤“得出结论说，第四修正案不适用于军方在国内的行动。“（大部分读者可能知道，尤是臭名昭著的《拷问备忘录》的作者，在这个备忘录中，“合法”的拷问被重新定义，除了谋杀以外的任何拷问手段都属合法。）在2001年的备忘录中，提到一个机密的司法部文件，题目是《美国国内使用军队对抗恐怖活动的授权》。局美联社报道，“10月备忘录中到底包括哪些国内军事行动不清楚。但是联邦文件指出，这个备忘录与国家安全局的恐怖监控计划有关。” 司法部长 约翰·马卡西上个月拒绝在国会澄清 尤 的备忘录是否仍然有效。
同时，国会的消息源向《雷达》杂志提供消息说，国会议员 彼得·迪法吉奥很显然已经放弃了弄清继续执政计划里的那份机密附件的努力。 迪法吉奥的办公室主任 佩妮·到齐的说法与此相反，她本周对《雷达》杂志说，我们将会很快致函，所要此机密附件的简要说明。”
（全文完）
[ 本帖最后由 dakelv 于 2008-10-31 10:19 编辑 ] |
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