Free America

Comes out this a.m. in the New York Times that teams of FBI agents have been "interviewing" (the interviewees say "intimidating") certain anti-war activists and other perceived "troublemakers" about their plans for public protests at the Republican National Convention in New York in two weeks.

You see, they have a little list (of people who won't be missed?): "F.B.I. officials are urging agents to canvass their communities for information about planned disruptions aimed at the convention and other coming political events, and they say they have developed a list of people who they think may have information about possible violence."

"They think." (And what does a "canvass" of the local community entail?)

And here I was all this time under the impression that in our democracy you actually had to be guilty of something before the agents came to get you. It's the Bush doctrine of preemption, applied domestically. As a caller on C-SPAN this morning said, "Well, it's fascism, is what it is."

"The message I took from it," said Sarah Bardwell, 21, an intern at a Denver antiwar group who was visited by six investigators a few weeks ago, "was that they were trying to intimidate us into not going to any protests and to let us know that, 'hey, we're watching you.' "

The NYTimes says there's been internal dissent at the FBI about this course of action, with some agents pointing out that this looks like an attempt to stifle free speech. But John Ashcroft's Justice Department whipped out a handy memo opining that no, that any possible "chilling" effect would be vastly outweighed by the good that will be bestowed on the Republic by the intimidation. Abu Ghraib again, about which the Justice Department also wrote a notorious legal opinion ... "a little torture in the interests of freedom is a-okay!"

Since we don't fly any more, we take it as true from people who do that travelers are now asked to answer a questionnaire that asks such gently probing questions as "Do you plan to blow up this plane?" Under the presumption, we assume, that terrorists will tell the truth. This same logic appears to be at work in the FBI "interviews" with anti-war activists: "Interrogations have generally covered the same three questions, according to some of those questioned and their lawyers: were demonstrators planning violence or other disruptions, did they know anyone who was, and did they realize it was a crime to withhold such information."

If you know the question you're asking is stupid, and if you know you'll never get an honest answer to such a question, especially if the interviewee really is planning violence, then the only possible therapeutic outcome from asking is the possibility of intimidation. It's what any honest person calls "a police state," where stupid questions presage the strong arm.