US ALLY THUMBS NOSE AT ITS BIGGEST DONOR

By William Fisher

Despite a US Congressional warning exempting American democracy-promotion funds from having to obtain prior approval from the Government of Egypt, the Mubarak regime - a major recipient of US aid and hailed by he Bush Administration as a staunch ally in the "global war on terror" -- has shut down one of the country's premiere human rights organizations.

Earlier this month, Egypt dissolved the Association for Human Rights Legal Aid (AHRLA), based on its alleged breach of the Associations Law that prohibits NGOs from receiving funding from abroad without the prior authorization of the Ministry of Social Solidarity.

The Egyptian Government currently receives some $ 2 billion economic and in military assistance from the US - behind only to Israel and Iraq. American assistance to Egypt began as a reward for Egypt's recognition of Israel following the Camp David Accords 1979, and the two countries' establishment of full diplomatic relations.

AHRLA chairperson Tarek Khater said his organization has not received any foreign funding since 2005 when it obtained a grant from the US-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

At that time, he added, AHRLA submitted more than a dozen requests to obtain permission from the Ministry of Social Solidarity to use these funds but has never received any response from the authorities. To avoid the paralysis of the organization and continue to carry out its projects, AHRLA eventually decided to start using the funds.

The NDI, a private democracy-promotion organization authorized and funded by the US Government, was not immdiately available to comment on the size and purpose of its grant to the AHRLA.

Earlier this month, the official receiver appointed by the dissolution decree came to the AHRLA office accompanied by a number of security officers and confiscated the organization's checkbooks to prevent it from using its funds.

AHRLA has appealed the dissolution decree before the Egyptian Administrative Court and a hearing has been scheduled for October 21, 2007.

AHRLA said the government's decision to shut down the organization "appears to be in reprisal for its activities exposing human rights violations in Egypt and providing legal assistance to victims of torture."

In a statement, more than 25 of the most prominent human rights groups in Egypt denounced the decision to shut down AHRLA as a measure taken by the government "in retaliation to the association's significant role in exposing the institutionalized and widespread torture wave hitting Egypt."

The organizations declared, "The attempt to shut down AHRLA will not pass, it's a show-down between us and this police-minded government. The government has no other resort but to reveal its true domineering face and send us to jail or to acknowledge the right of the civil society to work freely and independently."

The shutdown came in spite of a declaration in the US State and Foreign Operations Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2008, that "with respect to the provision of assistance for Egypt for democracy, human rights and governance activities, the organizations implementing such assistance and the specific nature of that assistance shall not be subject to the prior approval by the Government of Egypt."

AHRLA has been involved in a sustained effort to address the pervasive use of torture by the police and security forces and to support victims by representing them before the courts on a pro bono basis.

This is not the first time the Egyptian government has used "prior approval of foreign funding" to crack down on the human rights community. In 1998, Hafez Abu Saada, Secretary General of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) was taken into detention and accused of taking money from foreign sources to defame the reputation of Egypt abroad. The accusations related to an EOHR report about human rights violations in Upper Egypt.

In 2000, Egyptian-American sociology professor Saad Eddin Ibrahim, chair of Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies (ICDS), an NGO that promotes human rights and democratic reform in Egypt, was convicted along with other researchers at ICDS on charges of "receiving foreign funding without permission", "disseminating false information abroad" and "misappropriation of funds", and sentenced to seven years' hard labor. Following an international campaign in support of Dr. Ibrahim and intense pressure from the international community, Egypt's Court of Cassation ultimately declared his earlier trial improper and acquitted him and his associates at the Ibn Khaldoun Center of all charges. The ICDS was accused of accepting a grant from the European Community to make a film promoting voting rights and encouraging citizen participation in elections.

Among AHRLA's clients is the family of Mohamed Abdel Kader el-Sayed, who was reportedly tortured to death by a State Security officer. The case of al-Sayed was brought before the courts by the AHRLA resulting in the first prosecution since 1986 of a State Security officer for torture and ill-treatment. However, despite the solid forensic evidence provided by AHRLA, the Sate Security officer suspected of torturing al-Sayed to death was acquitted by the court on September 5, 2007, the very same day that the decision to close the organization was announced.

The question of requiring government authorization in order for NGOs to receive funding from abroad has long been a controversial aspect of the Egyptian law on associations. In her report to the U.N. General Assembly in 2004, Hina Jilani, the U.N. Special Representative on Human Rights Defenders, said, "Given the limited resources available for human rights organizations at the local level, legal requirements of prior authorization for international funding have seriously affected the ability of human rights defenders to carry out their activities. In some cases, they have seriously endangered the very existence of human rights organizations. The ability of human rights defenders to carry out their activities rests on their ability to receive funds and utilize them without undue restriction."

She recommended that "Access to funds, including from foreign sources, for the purpose of defending human rights, should be ensured and facilitated by the law." The Government, ruled by the aging Hosni Mubarak since 1981, chose to ignore her recommendation.

The shutdown of AHRLA follows a number of repressive measures taken in recent months by the government in what appears to be a clampdown on the independent Egyptian human rights community. In December 2006, the Governor of al-Qalyubiyah province issued a decision to shut down the Ahalina Center for Egyptian Family Support and Development that provides legal aid as well as health and social services to the deprived inhabitants of the city of Shubra Al-Khayma. The closure of the Ahalina Center appeared to be a reprisal for its public criticism of the governor's policies.

In April 2007, the Egyptian authorities closed down the headquarters and two branches of the Center for Trade Union and Workers Services (CTUWS), an independent NGO that provides legal aid to workers and monitors the situation of labor rights in Egypt. To justify the shut down of the CTUWS, the government claimed that the organization was inciting workers to strike and constituted a "threat to national security".

Following its closure, the CTUWS submitted a request to Ministry of Social Solidarity to register as the Center for Trade Unions and Human Affairs, but its request was rejected on August 14, 2007, for unexplained "security reasons."

These developments come amid fears among civil society organizations that a bill to amend the Associations Law of 2002, drafted by Ministry of Social Solidarity officials without any input from them, will impose new restrictions on NGOs. The Ministry of Social Solidarity has reportedly finalized the amendment bill, which is expected to be examined soon by parliament.

Human rights activists charge that the bill will particularly target a large number of human rights or legal aid groups that have chosen to register as civil companies or law firms to avoid the heavy restrictions imposed by the Associations Law. The amendments are expected to compel these groups to sacrifice their independence by obliging them to subject themselves to the onerous restrictions provided for in the 2002 Law.

A number of human rights groups, including the Hisham Mubarak Law Center and the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRINFO), have offered to share their offices with AHRLA in case it is forced out of its office by the authorities.

On September 16, representatives from civil society gathered outside the AHRLA office to show their support and solidarity. A series of peaceful protest actions have been scheduled for the next few weeks by civil society groups including the closing down of their websites on September 23, a strike on September 30, a demonstration on October 4 and a sit-in before the Administrative Court on October 21.

The crackdown on human rights and other civil society organizations is not limited to Egypt; similar measures are being taken by authoritarian governments throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

While consistently being noted in the State Department's annual Human Rights reports, this trend has drawn little comment from the Bush Administration, despite the president's pledge in his second State of the Union message to "spread freedom" throughout the world. Administration officials have implied that they see a conflict between fighting terror and promoting democracy, and that counter-terrorism is their highest priority.

But many other observers have labeled this a faux conflict and said the US should have the skills and the political will to do both.

For example, Amnesty International's Mary Shaw told Truthout, "Egypt's decision to shut down the AHRLA appears to be a consequence not of any financial mismanagement by the organization but rather an attempt by the Egyption government to silence a group that supports victims of torture and works to expose human rights violations in Egypt."

She added, "The Egyptian government says that it opposes torture even as it persecutes those who work to expose torture cases and assist the victims. And now those victims will lose access to the social and legal services that AHRLA provided.Actions speak louder than words, and the world is watching."

FOREIGN SERVICE OFFICERS CALL ON EMBATTLED I.G. TO STEP DOWN

By William Fisher

The organization that represents America’s diplomats is calling on the State Department’s Inspector General to step down “pending the resolution of grave allegations of malfeasance leveled against him by numerous current and former career government officials.”

John K. Naland, President of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), said allegations against the Inspector General (IG) cover all investigations, audits, and inspections. “They include allegations of his blocking investigations into possible sub-standard construction at the US Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, which may leave employees there unacceptably vulnerable,” Naland said.

He noted that the 13-page list of allegations released earlier this week by Rep. Henry A. Waxman, (D-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, “revealed that AFSA also has been approached in recent days by several concerned former State Department employees with direct knowledge of some of the events in question.”

Naland was referring to the letter Waxman sent to the embattled IG, Howard J. Krongard, suggesting he repeatedly blocked investigations into waste, fraud and mismanagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, including construction of the massive new US Embassy in Baghdad to protect the Bush Administration from political embarrassment. Waxman plans to convene hearings next month into the charges leveled against Krongard.

Naland added, “The worse-case scenario in corruption is when it endangers lives. The worse-case scenario in public service is when the watchdog becomes the suspected violator. Both of these allegations have been leveled against Mr. Krongard. As long as he maintains day-to-day control, his office’s ability to do its vital job with full credibility will be compromised. He should step down until the allegations are resolved one way or another.”

The American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), established in 1924, is the professional association of the United States Foreign Service. With 13,000 dues-paying members, AFSA represents 26,000 active and retired Foreign Service employees of the Department of State and Agency for International Development (AID), as well as smaller groups in the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), US & Foreign Commercial Service (FCS), and International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB).

AFSA's principal missions are to enhance the effectiveness of the Foreign Service, to protect the professional interests of its members, to ensure the maintenance of high professional standards for both career diplomats and political appointees, and to promote understanding of the critical role of the Foreign Service in promoting America's national security and economic prosperity.

According to Rep. Waxman, government officials have accused Krongard of repeatedly blocking investigations into contracting fraud and censoring reports that might prove politically embarrassing to the Bush administration.

Waxman’s letter to Krongard said the allegations were based on the testimony of seven current and former officials on Krongard's staff, including two former senior officials who allowed their names to be used, and private e-mail exchanges obtained by the committee. The letter said the allegations concerned all three major divisions of Krongard's office -- investigations, audits and inspections.

Waxman’s letter to Krongard charged that “One consistent element in these allegations is that you believe your foremost mission is to support the Bush administration."

The California congressman wrote that Krongard's subordinates said he showed “contempt'' for career employees, and some staff members fear going to work.” He added that “Several top officials have resigned since Krongard took the helm and haven't been replaced.”

According to Waxman, Krongard refused to look into problems with a Kuwaiti company hired to lead construction of the US Embassy in Baghdad. The Justice Department in January asked for help looking into allegations of misconduct by the company, but Krongard told his staff to stand down, Waxman's letter said.

Meanwhile, a watchdog group known as Concerned Foreign Service Officers (CFSO) claims that Krongard’s office issued a “whitewash” in a 2006 investigation into whether State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) was unfairly revoking and denying security clearances. Krongard's office found no wrongdoing, but the CFSO claimed Krongard's office “made no attempt to conduct a serious inspection.”

CFSO asked Krongard’s office to look into allegations that Foreign Service Officers’ security clearances were being suspended – and often later revoked -- without effective due process on the basis of unsubstantiated and frivolous allegations from undisclosed sources.

Without their security clearances, senior Foreign Service Officers essentially lose their careers, are barred from serving in overseas posts, and are assigned to pushing papers at State’s headquarters in Washington.

Krongard’s 2006 report concluded that DS “equitably administers the process for the revocation of security clearances.”

It determined that “investigators and adjudicators’ actions appeared free of bias or prejudice and were based upon specified investigative and adjudicative guidelines and upon Executive Orders and Department of State standards, as published in the Foreign Affairs Manual.”

The CFSO dismissed most of Krongard’s findings as irrelevant to the core issues.

Krongard’s 2006 review was prompted in part because a congressional office had provided The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) with a constituent’s allegation that DS does not promptly, efficiently, and fairly investigate and adjudicate security clearance suspensions, resulting in a waste of government resources and placing Department employees’ careers and reputations at risk.

Waxman’s letter to Krongard also suggested that the IG tipped off a controversial Bush appointee about a whistleblower investigation into the official's alleged misconduct. In 2005, congressional lawmakers sent a letter asking Krongard to look into complaints that Kenneth Tomlinson, then head of the governing board of Voice of America, sought to collect pay from the board while he did work for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which he also ran.

Waxman said Krongard had the congressional letter faxed directly to Tomlinson's office, jeopardizing the investigation. Tomlinson is a “close associate'' of recently resigned White House political operative Karl Rove.

“These actions caused an important source to become wary of cooperation with the investigation because of fear of retaliation,'' Waxman wrote.

Krongard has called Waxman’s allegations “replete with inaccuracies." He said he has tried to assist other agencies without overlapping with other investigations.

Krongard was appointed by President George W. Bush as Inspector General of the Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors in May 2005. A graduate of Harvard law school, he has a long history of associations with establishment organizations and law firms.

Inspectors General are appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate. The IG’s mission is to independently investigate and make corrective recommendations regarding waste, fraud and improper conduct within their respective departments and agencies. IGs serve in all major government department departments, and smaller agencies, as well as in the military.

While the IG Act of 1978 requires that IGs be selected based upon their qualifications and not political affiliation, IGs are considered political appointees and are often selected in part because of their political relationships and party affiliation.

BUSH APPOINTEE HAS BEEN IN HOT WATER BEFORE

By William Fisher

A group of current and retired State Department officials is charging that the Department’s chief watchdog is more interested in protecting the Bush Administration from political embarrassment than in rooting out waste, fraud and abuse.

The official under fire, State Department Inspector General Howard J. Krongard, is under investigation by Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat and Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. According to Waxman, government officials have accused Krongard of repeatedly blocking investigations into contracting fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan, including construction of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, and censoring reports that might prove politically embarrassing to the Bush administration.

Waxman’s 13-page letter to Krongard said the allegations were based on the testimony of seven current and former officials on Krongard's staff, including two former senior officials who allowed their names to be used, and private e-mail exchanges obtained by the committee. The letter said the allegations concerned all three major divisions of Krongard's office -- investigations, audits and inspections.

Waxman’s Committee will hold hearings on the charges on October 16.

But this will not be the first time Krongard’s performance has been placed under scrutiny.

A watchdog group known as Concerned Foreign Service Officers (CFSO) claims that Krongard’s office issued a “whitewash” in a 2006 investigation into whether State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) was unfairly revoking and denying security clearances. Krongard's office found no wrongdoing, but the CFSO claimed Krongard's office “made no attempt to conduct a serious inspection.”

CFSO asked Krongard’s office to look into allegations that Foreign Service Officers’ security clearances were being suspended – and often later revoked -- without effective due process on the basis of unsubstantiated and frivolous allegations from undisclosed sources. Without their security clearances, senior Foreign Service Officers essentially lose their careers, are barred from serving in overseas posts, and are assigned to pushing papers at State’s headquarters in Washington.

CFSO has been waging a campaign to reign in the power of the DS and create a more equitable process for State employees to contest their suspensions, including the right to confront their accusers and to see evidence against them. Many of those whose State clearances have been suspended continue to hold high-level clearances with other agencies including the Defense Department.

Krongard’s 2006 report concluded that DS “equitably administers the process
for the revocation of security clearances.”

It determined that “investigators and adjudicators’ actions appeared free of bias or prejudice and were based upon specified investigative and adjudicative guidelines and upon Executive Orders and Department of State standards, as published in the Foreign Affairs Manual.”

Krongard’s office, however, found that:

• DS does not have a process to follow up on those cases containing a conditional
reinstatement of the security clearance. In six of the 31 closed cases that reinstated an employee’s clearance based on the employee meeting certain conditions, DS only followed up on one case to ensure that all conditions of the reinstatement had been met.

• Employees can appeal the proposed revocation of their security clearance to a three-member appeals panel that includes the Under Secretary for Management, the Assistant Secretary for Administration, and the official who is both Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of Human Resources. However, the appeals panel does not have a specified time frame in which to meet. This may further delay the process. After DS transmitted employees’ appeals, the appeals panel took from three to 13 months to render the Department’s final decision.

Its recommendations included:

· DS should implement a process to follow up on cases in which the letter of security clearance reinstatement imposes conditions, documenting with a memorandum in the case file whether the employee met the stated conditions.

· DS should follow up on the six closed cases that have conditional reinstatements to determine whether the employees met the conditions.

· The Under Secretary for Management, in coordination with the Bureaus of Administration and Human Resources, should convene an appeals panel and render a decision within a reasonable time, such as 45 calendar days after receiving from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security a notification of an employee’s appeal of a decision to revoke a security clearance.

In a set of “informal recommendations” Krongrard’s report found that Department employees were not aware that their cases will be further delayed each time they submit new information to DS or if they commit another offense during the adverse action process. Krongard’s report recommended that DS should state in the employee’s memorandum for revocation that any additional information provided or additional offenses committed during the course of the adverse action process will further delay the employee’s case.

Krongard also found that adverse action case files were poorly organized, and suggested that DS make better use of information technology to enable uploading and downloading from certain web-based applications.

The CFSO dismissed most of Krongard’s findings as irrelevant to the core issues.

For example, CFSO said that investigating agents “selectively recorded derogatory information and failed to record positive or potentially mitigating information. We said that the basic source information was further selectively presented and distorted in Report of Investigation (ROIs), and that these flawed ROIs then formed the basis of flawed adjudications.”

Krongard’s 2006 review was prompted in part because a congressional office had provided The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) with a constituent’s allegation that DS does not promptly, efficiently, and fairly investigate and adjudicate security clearance suspensions, resulting in a waste of government resources and placing Department employees’ careers and reputations at risk.

Additionally, the CFSO charged that security clearances are suspended for reasons other than risk to national security; security clearances are suspended arbitrarily and decisions are influenced by bias, prejudice, and ignorance; there is improper and unnecessary referral of clearance-suspension cases to other agencies; investigations are lengthy; and the process lacked adjudicative standards.

In the current confrontation, Rep. Waxman wrote to Krongard, “One consistent element in these allegations is that you believe your foremost mission is to support the Bush administration.''

The California congressman wrote that Krongard's subordinates said he showed “contempt'' for career employees, and some staff members fear going to work.” He added that “Several top officials have resigned since Krongard took the helm and haven't been replaced.”

According to Waxman, Krongard refused to look into problems with a Kuwaiti company hired to lead construction of the US Embassy in Baghdad. The Justice Department in January asked for help looking into allegations of misconduct by the company, but Krongard told his staff to stand down, Waxman's letter said.

In a later e-mail, assistant Inspector General John DeDona complained to Krongard's deputy, William Todd, that Krongard's top staff wanted to “keep working the BS cases'' in Washington and “not rock the boat with other more significant investigations.''

DeDona, who recently resigned his job as assistant inspector general for investigations, is cooperating with Waxman's inquiry, according to the letter. Ralph McNamara, former deputy assistant inspector general for investigations, also is working with Waxman's staff.

Waxman also wrote that Krongard tipped off a controversial Bush appointee about a whistleblower investigation into the official's alleged misconduct. In 2005, congressional lawmakers sent a letter asking Krongard to look into complaints that Kenneth Tomlinson, then head of the governing board of Voice of America, sought to collect pay from the board while he did work for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which he also ran.

Waxman said Krongard had the congressional letter faxed directly to Tomlinson's office, jeopardizing the investigation. Tomlinson is a “close associate" of recently resigned White House political operative Karl Rove.

“These actions caused an important source to become wary of cooperation with the investigation because of fear of retaliation,'' Waxman wrote.

Krongard has called Waxman’s allegations “replete with inaccuracies.'' He said he has tried to assist other agencies without overlapping with other investigations.

President George W. Bush appointed Krongard as Inspector General of the Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors in May 2005. A graduate of Harvard law school, he has a long history of associations with establishment organizations and law firms.

Inspectors General are appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate. The IG’s mission is to independently investigate and make corrective recommendations regarding waste, fraud and improper conduct within their respective departments and agencies. IGs serve in all major government department departments, and most smaller agencies, as well as in the military.

While the IG Act of 1978 requires that IGs be selected based upon their qualifications and not political affiliation, IGs are considered political appointees and are often selected in part because of their political relationships and party affiliation.

IRAQ AND THE BUSH "DEMOCRACY AGENDA"

By William Fisher

Democracy was a word scarcely heard in the just-concluded Congressional testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

The principal reason, according to a new report published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is that despite sweeping rhetoric about the global spread of democracy, the Bush Administration has significantly damaged US democracy promotion efforts and increased the number of close ties with "friendly tyrants."

Security interests, such as the war on terrorism, and US energy needs have led the Bush Administration to maintain friendly, unchallenged relations with more than half of the forty-five "non-free" countries in the world.

According to the author of the new report, Thomas Carothers, Carnegie's Vice President for Studies, the Iraq war has been a principal cause of democracy backsliding. Autocratic Arab leaders - long-standing US allies -- have been able to "use the war to reinforce their long-standing message to their citizens about the perils of rapid democratic change," Carothers writes.

"Even a cursory look at Bush policy reveals a substantial gap between talk and action on democracy, whether it is the continued cozy relations with the Saudi government, the US embrace of Pakistan's military dictator Pervez Musharraf, or the largely uncritical line toward China's continued authoritarianism".

The report, entitled, "US Democracy Promotion During and After Bush," charges that despite the Bush Administration's "florid" rhetoric about promoting democracy throughout the world, this objective has been consistently trumped by the "Global War on Terror," resulting in American embrace of anti-democratic dictators within and outside the Middle East.

Carothers writes, "Day after day Arab citizens see on their televisions tens or even hundreds of Arabs dying as a result of a 'democratic experiment' in their region. The spillover problems of the war-refugees, new terrorist groups, rising Shia-Sunni tensions-cause other Arab governments to feel less rather than more latitude to try political openings...The democracy agenda is continually put forward (at least rhetorically) by the United States, whose policies in the region most Arabs detest, taints the very concept in many Arabs' minds."

The report suggests that Bush Administration rhetorical efforts to promote democracy are seriously hampered by the world perception of hypocrisy. It declares, "The Bush administration's trampling of the rule of law in its antiterrorist pursuits -- the repeated, shocking abuses of detainees and prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo; the secret CIA prisons; the unauthorized domestic eavesdropping; the stripping away of rights of designated 'enemy combatants'; and all the rest-has done grievous, even devastating harm to America's status as a promoter of democracy and human rights in the world."

It adds, "Although difficult to measure, the power of positive example has long been one of the most important -- perhaps the most important-means by which established democracies assert a pro-democratic influence in the world. It is enough to talk to any democracy or human rights activist abroad, many of whom have traditionally relied on US leverage to bolster their position, to understand how damaging the loss of US legitimacy in this domain has been under Bush."

Carothers recalls the President's messianic second inaugural address, which set out what came to be known as his "freedom agenda," declaring that "America is a nation with a mission, and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs.... It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture."

But he concludes that "The actual extent of the Bush commitment to democracy promotion is much less than the president's sweeping rhetoric would suggest. Although the administration insists that the Iraq intervention was a democratizing mission from day one, this proposition remains intensely debated at home and abroad. Bush policy in the rest of the Middle East temporarily diverted from the traditional line of supporting autocratic Arab allies but has returned to it during the past year."

He adds, "The hope of advancing a regional democratic agenda has been deeply undercut by the Iraq war. Major elements of the Bush approach to the war on terror and to foreign policy in general have significantly damaged the cause not only of democracy but also of democracy promotion."

Negative views toward democracy and democracy promotion, he writes, are not limited to Iraq. The whole of the Middle East, "remains stuck in authoritarian rule. The spread of democracy has stagnated in the rest of the world, with democratic reversals or backsliding outweighing gains."

The Iraq War and other Bush Administration initiatives, the report states, have also been responsible for the erosion of pro-democracy support at home. "Under George W. Bush, democracy promotion has been widely discredited through its close association with the Iraq war. Only a minority of the US public now supports democracy promotion as a US policy goal, and both the Republican and Democratic parties are internally divided on the subject."

The report notes that democracy promotion achieved significant bipartisan support within the US policy community and public from the late 1980s until the early years of this decade, "that consensus has shattered."

The Republican Party, Carothers notes, "is riven by disputes between realists determined to pull Washington back from transformative goals abroad and neoconservatives still ferociously attached to such ideas."

And the Democratic Party, "although less clearly fractioned, is also divided. A strong vein of liberal internationalism runs through the community of Democratic foreign policy specialists, but significant skepticism about America's ability to project its political values abroad is common in the Democratic ranks."

Moreover, the report finds, "The US public is increasingly doubtful regarding democracy promotion, with the Iraq war triggering a substantial decline in public support for it. In a recent U.S. poll, fewer than half of the persons polled (45 percent) agreed with the proposition that the United States should promote democracy abroad. A partisan divide marks the public's views on this subject as well: Only 35 percent of registered Democrats accepted the idea, while 64 percent of registered Republicans did."

While acknowledging that "the future of democracy promotion as part of US foreign policy is uncertain," Carothers asserts that if the next US president seeks to resurrect domestic and international support for democracy and its promotion, he or she will have to adopt a new three-point policy framework.

"First, democracy promotion must be decontaminated from the negative taint it acquired under President Bush. This can be accomplished by improving U.S. compliance with the rule of law in the war on terrorism, ending the close association of democracy promotion with military intervention and regime change, and reducing the inconsistency of U.S. democracy policy by exerting real pressure for change on some key autocratic partners, such as Pakistan and Egypt.

"Second, democracy promotion must be repositioned in the war on terrorism. The idea that democratization will undercut the roots of terrorism is appealing but easily overstated. Promoting democratic change may in some countries help encourage moderates over radicals, but it is far from an antiterrorist elixir. The next administration should deescalate rhetorical emphasis on democracy promotion as the centerpiece of the war on terrorism and escalate actual commitment to the issue in pivotal cases where supporting democratic change can help diminish growing radicalization.

"Third, US democracy promotion must be recalibrated to account for larger changes in the international context. A host of ongoing developments, such as the rise of alternative political models, new trends in globalization, and the high price of oil and gas, have eroded the validity of a whole set of assumptions on which US democracy promotion was built in the 1980s and 1990s. The next administration will need to respond in large and small ways, such as by drawing an explicit tie between energy policy and democracy policy, reengaging internationally at the level of basic political ideas, reducing the America-centrism of US democracy building efforts, and strengthening the core institutional sources of democracy assistance."

Carothers concludes, "Continued efforts by President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to claim that a democratic transformation of the Middle East is somehow still in the making ring hollow against the harsh contrary reality: The Middle East not only remains deeply stuck in nondemocratic politics, it is wracked by violent conflicts in Iraq, in Lebanon between Hizbollah and Israel, in Palestine, and between Palestine and Israel, as well as gripped by rising Shia-Sunni tensions and the growing influence of Iran."

Beyond the Middle East, Carothers writes, Bush policy "is primarily driven by economic and security interests that often clash with support for democracy, such as in China, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, and many other places."

The report asserts that the post-September 11 conclusion in Washington policy circles that "pervasive Arab autocracy is a cause of the violent Islamic radicalism provoked a genuine questioning of the traditional US policy of support for 'friendly tyrants' in the region."

But, it concludes that this "new approach was deeply torn from the start both by an uncertain commitment to it from all parts of the US government and by conflicting imperatives deriving from other US interests."

As examples, Carothers writes, "Although the administration now characterizes its interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq as democratizing missions, in both cases the story is much more complex, with security objectives playing a major role. The intervention in Afghanistan was clearly security driven, although once the Taliban had been ousted the United States helped broker a democratically oriented political reconstruction process. Since the initial intervention, however, the Bush administration has been unwilling to commit a sufficient level of forces to secure order, allowing the elected government of President Hamid Kharzai to come under severe pressure from a renewed Taliban insurgency."

The report also notes that "How much democracy figured in the administration's decision to topple Saddam Hussein is still fiercely debated in Washington, more than four years after the fact."

Carothers writes, "The administration labored to get an elected government in place (after the Iraqi Shia leadership essentially forced the Coalition Provisional Authority to agree to elections) and to help it survive. Yet at the same time the administration failed to commit the number of US forces necessary to stabilize the country, while also showing little interest in democracy aid efforts in the country, and demonstrating a frequent impulse to stage manage post-Saddam Iraqi politics with scant regard for democratic principles."

As for the administration's policy of pushing friendly autocratic Arab allies toward greater political reform, "such efforts have been half-hearted at best," Carothers writes. "The administration exerted the greatest pressure on Egyptian President Mubarak, but even that has ended up largely toothless. The Egyptian strongman has paid no price (other than a delay of free trade agreement negotiations) for pointedly defying the administration's plea for free and fair elections in 2005 and subsequently cracking down on political opposition forces. Other U.S. autocratic allies in the region have felt almost no pressure at all, despite the Bush team's grand pronouncements about its commitment to a politically transformed region."

Administration concern about Iran, the report notes, "has further sidelined the democratization agenda. Seeking to mobilize a coalition of friendly Arab states to check Iran's influence in the region, the administration has recently been tightening ties with friendly autocrats in the region, including offering an extremely large new package of military sales and assistance for Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the smaller Gulf states."

Carothers says the Bush administration "describes this effort as unifying the 'moderates' against the 'radicals' in the region, implying that it is actually a pro-democratic policy." But his report notes that "the moderate camp is made up of a collection of firmly nondemocratic states, some highly repressive...."

In prosecuting the war on terrorism, Carothers charges," the administration has embraced various nondemocratic governments it perceives as useful partners. This is a familiar pattern in the Middle East where the close antiterrorism cooperation in recent years between the United States and a host of autocratic regimes, including those in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, is an extension of a long-standing approach. Under the war on terrorism this pattern has spread to other regions, including South and Southeast Asia and Africa."

The Bush team, he says, "has championed Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf as a key ally in the war on terrorism, overlooking his glaring antidemocratic character for the sake of his (at least hoped for) help in going after Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The administration provides lavish diplomatic support, military assistance, and economic aid to the Pakistan strongman. The Bush bear hug is not tempered by any pro-democratic component-no real push on constitutional reform, free and fair elections, return to civilian rule, or human rights abuses. The absence of any noticeable concern with Pakistan's democratic deficit is partly the result of the administration's intense focus on obtaining Musharraf's cooperation and not wanting to raise troublesome political issues that might muddy the waters of friendship. It is also due to the Bush team's belief that Musharraf is holding together a potentially unstable, dangerous political situation, and that desirable as democratization might be in theory, in practice it is too risky to try."

Similar rationales have been advanced by the Bush Administration regarding energy-rich countries such as Ethiopia and Kazakhstan, Carothers asserts. It has been tough only on states such as Belarus, Burma, Cuba, and Zimbabwe, "where the United States has no significant interests in oil, antiterrorism cooperation, or other issues that would render friendship with the regime beneficial," Carothers observes.

Outside the Middle East, Carothers finds, "it is difficult to find evidence of any major positive US impact on the state of democracy. The report states, "Although the health of democracy in Latin America is clearly vital to America's overall interests in the region, the Bush administration has failed to engage on this issue in any high-level or sustained way." The same is true in Central Asia, China, Russia, and South Asia.

MAJORIE COHN’S JUSTICE GENE

Book Review by William Fisher

The past six years have seen an avalanche of books excoriating President George W. Bush, the key figures in his administration, and the ideologies, policies and practices they have embraced.

Some have been eye-opening blockbusters, like Bob Woodward’s State of Denial. Others have found themselves in the remaindered section of your bookstore. Some, like Woodward’s, have been long and dense, tough reads filled with incriminating quotes from The Decider himself. Others have been often inaccessible offerings by serious journalists in military history, like Tom Ricks of the Washington Post (Fiasco) and Michael Gordon of the New York Times (Cobra II). A few have genuinely illuminated little-known and under-reported aspects of the Bush Administration; Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran springs to mind. So too does David Cole’s Enemy Aliens. Too many others have forsaken solid evidence and confirmed sources to deliver over-simplistic rants, more akin to pamphleteering on rhetorical steroids.

Consider just a few of the other titles in this growing cottage industry: The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception by David Corn. Bush Must Go by Bill Press. Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush by John W. Dean. Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq by Sheldon Rampton. The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush by Molly Ivins. The Bush - Haters Handbook: A Guide to the Most Appalling Presidency of the Past 100 Years by Jack Huberman. The One Per Cent Doctrine by Ron Suskind. And the list goes on. And on. And on.

So was there a need for yet another anti-Bush book? Well, it turns out there was. Because Majorie Cohn’s modest new volume, Cowboy Republic, (Polipoint Press) achieves two goals so often missing from the growing library of tomes chronicling Dubya’s failings. First, it includes the exquisite legal detail one would expect from a distinguished lawyer. But arguably more important, it does so in straightforward everyman-language that makes it accessible to ordinary folks who don’t happen to be either lawyers or political junkies.

Majorie Cohn seems to have been around forever. A professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego and president of the National Lawyers Guild, hers has been a powerful voice on both mainstream and alternative radio and television, in major newspapers and magazines, and on the web. Moreover, it is a voice that has become more thoughtful, more forceful, more consistent – and, yes, more civil, over the years.

Which is not to say Ms.. Cohn lacks passion. On the contrary, it is this very passion that helps make this little book to so eminently readable. But, happily, Ms. Cohn’s passion doesn’t turn her new book into a polemic. If anything, the language she uses in making her case against the Bush Administration is somewhat under-stated, perhaps in the best legal tradition. Michael Moore she is not.

The subtitle of Cowboy Republic is “Six Ways the Bush Gang has Defied the Law” – and this book is about the law. So, at one level, it is a love story: Marjorie Cohn has been in love with the law for many years. In the face of a largely apathetic public and an often- supine press, she persists in her belief that a renaissance in respect for the rule of law will ultimately be the nation’s way out of its current mess.

Her case against the Bush Administration’s contempt of the rule of law lays out most of the high crimes and misdemeanors with which Truthout readers – and most of everyone else – have now become so familiar. The hypocrisy of US “support” for the United Nations. The “marketing” of the Iraq invasion. The unending conflation of Iraq and 9/11. The torture memos. Guantanamo. Extraordinary renditions. National Security Letters. The “disappeared” in CIA “black sites.” The euphemisms – i.e. “enhanced interrogation” – used to sanitize repeated US violations of the Geneva Conventions. The warrantless surveillance programs. The roundup and detention of foreigners suspected of being of Middle Eastern descent. The over-hyped press conference trumpeting the arrests of “the worst of the worst” – later set free, deported, or charged with far less egregious crimes. And the complicity of the president’s lawyers in finding “legal justifications” to condone the un-condonable, to ignore the separation of powers, and to promulgate the notion of a “unitary executive.”

Ms. Cohn writes of these transgressions with economy and clarity. Moreover, she places them within the context of America’s history, starting with the Sedition Laws of the late 18th Century that imprisoned journalists for speaking out against the government, through Attorney General Mitchell Palmer’s “Red Raids” to root out Bolsheviks in the 1920s, through the internment of Japanese-Americans in eh Second World War, through the Cold War’s shameful McCarthy debacle, through the myriad falsehoods perpetrated by government during Vietnam, though the lies of Nixon’s Watergate nightmare.

Her point is that the US has been here before, and that it has always been the law, in confluence with the activism of a minority of outraged citizenry, that has eventually righted the ship of Ship of State.

But Ms. Cohn refuses to rely solely on these tools. She is saying that time does not allow us the luxury of confidence in evolution and incrementalism alone. An activist needs action, and Ms. Cohn is nothing if not an activist.

Her hope was that the 2006 mid-term elections would have resulted in a groundswell of support for the impeachment of the President and his top aides. Today, she is clearly disappointed with the leadership of the new Congress. “Both Nency Pelosi, the new Speaker of the House, and John Conyers, the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee where impeachment would be initiated, have said, “Impeachment is off the table,” she writes.

Yet she is not without hope. “…if Congress fulfills its constitutional duty to investigate the Bush gang’s malfeasance, the legislators will invariably encounter stonewalling by the administration. That should anger many in Congress, who then might develop the resolve to launch impeachment hearings,” she writes, adding:

“It is now time for us to demand truth, justice and accountability from the Cowboy Republicans. That means op-eds and letters to the editor, and writing e-mailing and calling Congress, insisting that the Bush gang be held to account for its high crimes and misdemeanors. We must organize protects, marches, and demonstrations to end the Iraq war and occupation and prevent the next war. Our lives and those of our children depend on it.”

For Marjorie Cohn, it will never depend on waiting for Gen. David Petraeus.

BUSH ADMINISTRATION RAMPS UP SECRECY

By William Fisher

The Bush Administration is continuing its campaign to keep the public in the dark about the federal government’s policies and decisions and to suppress discussion of those policies, their underpinnings, and their implications.

This is the conclusion reached in the latest annual “report card” on government secrecy compiled by Open the Government.org, a coalition of consumer and good government groups, librarians, environmentalists, labor leaders, journalists, and others who seek to promote greater transparency in public institutions.

Summarizing developments during the past year, the report card says, “Government secrecy, particularly in the Executive Branch, continues to expand across a broad array of agencies and actions, including military procurement, new private inventions, and the scientific and technical advice that the government receives.”

But the authors of the report also see “glimmers of progress toward more openness and examples of continued determination on the part of the public and its representatives.” They conclude, “Even as more and more categories that exclude information from access are created by agencies, the public use of the Freedom of Information Act to obtain information from our government continues to rise.”

The report card’s principal findings for fiscal year 2007 include:

· More than 25 per cent of all federal dollars ($107.5 billion) awarded to Defense Department contractors were without competition. Only a third of contract dollars are were subject to full and open competition. On average since 2000, more than a quarter of all contract funding was not competed.

· Some 18 per cent of the DOD’s FY 2007 acquisition budget is classified. These so-called “black programs” amounted to $31.5 billion. Classified acquisition funding has more than doubled in real terms since fiscal year 1995, the report said.

· The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved 2,176 orders by the Justice Department -- rejecting only one — in 2006. The Court, established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) following the Watergate scandals to restrict government snooping on citizens, has been at the center of a political firestorm since President Bush revealed that the Administration had been conducting electronic surveillance without seeking FISA warrants.

· The Administration continued to invoke the so-called “state secrets” privilege, which allows the president to withhold documents from the courts, Congress and the public. At the height of the Cold War, the administration used the privilege only 6 times between 1953 and 1976. Since 2001, it has been used a reported 39 times -- an average of six times a year in 6.5 years, or more than double the average (2.46) over the previous 24 years.

· Requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) totaled 21,412,736, an increase of 1,462,189 over the previous year. The report card says backlogs of unfilled request remain significant; the oldest FOIA request in the federal government has now been pending for more than 20 years.

· The government recovered more than $3.1 billion in settlements and judgments as a result of complaints from whistleblowers. Over the last two decades, whistleblowers helped the federal government recover more than $18 billion according to the latest figures from the U.S. Department of Justice.

· While the number of original classified documents decreased to from 258,633 in 2005 to 231,995 in 2007, classification activity still remains significantly higher than before 2001. For every dollar the government spent declassifying documents in 2006, it spent $185 maintaining the secrets already on the books, a $51 increase from last year. Although more pages were declassified this year, the total publicly reported amount spent on declassification decreased. However, the report card notes, the intelligence agencies, which account for a large segment of the declassification numbers, are excluded from the total reported figures.

· Government departments and agencies continued their practice of designating documents as “Sensitive But Unclassified” (SBU). Only some 19 per cent of 107 SBU designations were based on formally promulgated regulations, about half with comment and half without. The rest – 82 per cent – were made up by the agencies as they went along, the report card charges.

· In six years, President Bush has issued at least 151 signing statements, challenging 1149 provisions of laws. “In the 211 years of our Republic to 2000, fewer than 600 signing statements that took issue with the bills were issued,” the report card asserts. In six years, it says, President Bush has issued at least 151 signing statements, challenging 1149 provisions of laws, adding, “In the 211 years of our Republic to 2000, fewer than 600 signing statements that took issue with the bills were issued. Among recent presidents, Reagan issued 71 statements challenging provisions of laws before him; G.W.H. Bush issued 146; Clinton, 105.” The most notorious of the current president’s signing statements related to the so-called McCain Amendment to a 2005 defense authorization bill that barred the "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" of detainees. The presidential statement raised serious questions about whether Bush intended to obey this new law.

· The report card cites a report by Justice Department’s Inspector General indicating that the government made 143,074 National Security Letter (NSL) requests between 2003 and 2005. The number for 2006 remains classified. NSLs can be used to obtain information about individuals without the government applying for a court-reviewed warrant. With 2,176 secret surveillance orders approved in 2006, federal surveillance activity under the jurisdiction of the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has more than doubled in five years.

· The federal penchant for secrecy is also spilling over to state governments, the report card claims. Since 2001, it says, “States have continued to introduce and enact new laws that limit, rather than loosen, access to government information at the state and local level. In that period, some 339 bills were introduced in the states and 266 passed the respective legislatures. The largest number of bills introduced (114) had to do with expanded executive powers, confidentiality based on federal regulations or programs, and closure of otherwise public meetings for security meetings. Fewer than half (52) passed; the lowest percentage of passage among 6 categories of bills.”

Open the Government.org concludes, “The current administration has exercised an unprecedented level not only of restriction of access to information about federal government’s policies and decisions, but also of suppression of discussion of those policies, their underpinnings, and their implications. It has also increasingly refused to be held accountable to the public through the oversight responsibilities of Congress. These practices inhibit democracy and our representative government; neither the public nor Congress can make informed decisions in these circumstances. Our open society is undermined and made insecure.”

The Open the Government coalition includes representatives of the Federation of American Scientists, the Sunlight Foundation, the American Association of Law Libraries, OMB Watch, the National Security Archive, the Project on Government Oversight, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the National Freedom of Information Coalition, the U S Public Interest Research Group, the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Fund for Constitutional Government, the Center for American Progress, the AFL-CIO, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

In a related development, the White House has declared the Office of Administration (OA) exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to avoid complying with a request to make public its information about five million missing emails,

Citizens for Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a FOIA request with the White House's OA for records that would document the White House's knowledge of the missing emails, its failure to restore the email or put in place an electronic record-keeping system that would prevent this problem, and the possibility that the emails were purposefully deleted.

In response, the Justice Department declared that the OA is not subject to FOIA. CREW is suing the White House Office of Administration for failing to respond to their request.

At least five million emails “disappeared” between March 2003 and October 2005, according to a report by CREW. The missing emails were discovered by the White House in 2005, according to a briefing given to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee staff by Keith Roberts, the Deputy General Counsel of the White House Office.

Rep. Henry Waxman [D-CA], Chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, is demanding that the OA turn over its analysis of the email system, conducted by the Office of the Chief Information Officer. According to the letter Rep. Waxman sent to White House Counsel Fred Fielding on Aug. 30, Roberts informed the Oversight Committee that an unidentified company working for the Information Assurance Directorate of the Office of the Chief Information Officer was responsible for daily audits of the e-mail system and the e-mail archiving process.

According to Rep. Waxman's letter, Roberts was not able to explain why the daily audits conducted by this contractor did not detect the problems in the archive system when they first began. The revelation that there were daily audits suggests that e-mails were destroyed, Anne Weismann, general counsel of CREW, told Bloomberg News.

The White House recently changed its FOIA website to exclude the OA from White House entities subject to FOIA. A note in the FOIA sections of the OA website now says, "The Office of Administration, whose sole function is to advise and assist the President, and which has no substantial independent authority, is not subject to FOIA and related authorities." Under Office of Administration's FOIA Regulations, it says, "The OA's Regulations concerning FOIA are currently being updated." OA's annual FOIA reports are available on the White House website for 1996-2006. In 2006, OA processed 65 requests and spent $87,772 on FOIA processing (including appeals).

The National Security Archive, a member of the OpenTheGovernment.org coalition, filed a lawsuit against the White House last week seeking the recovery and preservation of the emails.

RAMADAN GIVING PRESENTS DILEMMA FOR AMERICAN MUSLIMS

By William Fisher

As the mid-September Ramadan fast approaches, many American Muslims are in a quandary about how to fulfill their Quranic obligation to contribute to charity - since the US government has closed down and frozen the assets of many of the leading philanthropies that have traditionally championed Muslim causes for providing material support" to terrorist organizations.

Under current US law, the simple act of writing a check to a charity that is on a government watch list could result in a prosecution for supporting terrorist activity - even if the donor is unaware of the charity's designation by the government.

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the government has shut down dozens of Muslim-oriented charitable organizations and frozen millions of dollars of contributions, which languish in US banks. But criminal charges have been brought against only one such organization, The Holy Land Foundation, currently on trial in Dallas. The group was shut down and its assets confiscated in 2001 but the government did not file formal charges until 2004, and the trial did not begin until 2007.

Civil liberties advocates and many legal analysts are calling for changes in the three basic laws that give the government "blank check" authority to target Muslim-oriented charities with virtually no due process for the accused.

One of them, the Georgetown Law Center's David Cole, a widely respected Constitutional scholar, charges that "With our return to a 'preventive paradigm' of preemptively weeding out threats to national security, guilt by association has been resurrected from the McCarthy era. While it was illegal in the 1950s to be a member of the Communist Party, it is now a crime to support an individual or organization on a terror watch list, although the government can designate and freeze assets without a showing of actual ties to terrorism or illegal acts."

His view is shared by many other civil rights advocates and organizations. For example, Mary Shaw of Amnesty International USA told Truthout, "This is another example of the Bush administration's abuse of power, in this case by using executive orders to skirt established time-tested laws. With the legal process sidetracked by Bush's make-it-up-as-you-go system of prosecution in the war on terror, we may never know whether due cause was established in these cases."

She added, "Ironically, the Bush administration keeps talking about spreading democracy and the rule of law to other parts of the world, while at the same time eroding those same principles here at home."

Kay Guinane, director of Nonprofit Speech Rights for OMB Watch, a not-for-profit government watchdog, says, "The real tragedy behind closure of Muslim charities is the fate of people in need of humanitarian assistance, who are doing without because the funds have been frozen by the US and sit in the bank, benefiting no one."

OMB Watch asserts that such treatment of Muslim charities hurts, not helps, the war on terrorism. "With Muslim-Americans already facing post-9/11 suspicion and bias, both from other Americans and from the government, targeting Muslim charities sends an ugly message: The message that the government is selectively targeting Muslim charities."

And the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, believes there is "nothing much to show" for the government actions against Muslim-oriented charities. According to Dan Mitchell, Heritage's Senior Fellow in Political Economy, the anti-terrorist financing campaign has cost the private sector billions of dollars and has entailed a sweeping invasion of privacy, yet there is "nothing much to show for it."

The government's approach,he says, "defies common sense and has turned the traditional approach to law enforcement upside down." To this end, he says,
the FBI has not been able to develop a financial profile of a terrorist that
was any different from a regular banking customer. In the absence of a way
to target our efforts, the government is overwhelmed with data it cannot use and the banking sector has effectively been "looking for a needle in a haystack."

"Short of reading people's minds," he says, "there is no way to systematically track down terrorists or terrorist financing sources this way, and pursuing such a strategy is a waste of valuable resources."

According to David Cole, there are three main statutory regimes now being employed by the government to combat terrorism - and he says all of them are deeply flawed.

They are:

The USA PATRIOT Act Executive Order 13224, which makes it a crime to provide "material support" to an individual or organization on a terror watch list. These watch lists are prepared by the Secretary of State. There is no provision for notifying those being listed. According to Cole, "Material support has been interpreted loosely to include, for example, peacemaking assistance to a group such as the Kurdistan Workers Party or a link on a website, which resulted in the arrest of one individual." This statute, he argues, effectively circumvents due process, which is conspicuously absent from the process of designation."

The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which was originally designed for embargoes. During the Clinton administration, the government started using it for anti-terrorist purposes, putting "embargoes" on political groups or individuals under suspicion. According to Cole, "In the absence of a hearing or notification of charges, this is a violation of due process."

Immigration Law, says Cole, is the third weapon used by the government. "An immigrant cannot support any group that has threatened to use a weapon. Because this law is retroactive, even support for an organization such as the African National Congress that was legal at the time is an offense that could lead to deportation," he asserts.

Cole, who is currently litigating several cases challenging the material support laws, told Truthout, "What is needed is a requirement that the government show that a supporter intends to support the group's terrorist activities. Without such a requirement, the statute imposes guilt by association. There are also big problems with the procedures by which groups get designated, which afford virtually no process to designated groups."

The exact extent of charitable giving among American Muslims is as imprecise as the number of Muslims living in the US - estimates range from a million adults to seven million adults and children. But for all of them, the tradition of charity, referred to in Islam as Zakat, is a Muslim pillar of faith and thus a religious obligation. At peak times of giving, such as at the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting, Muslims throughout the world contribute to the poorest and neediest.

Where they will direct their contributions during this Ramadan remains unclear.

Arguably the Holy Land case is the highest-profile of the government's moves against charities -- President Bush personally announced the freezing of Holy Land's assets. HLF was the largest Muslim-American humanitarian organization, providing assistance overseas with an annual budget of close to $12 million. HLF provided services in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Kosovo, Chechnya, and elsewhere. To the average Muslim living in the US, HLF was a trusted name.

But on December 4, 2001, HLF was designated under IEEPA as a terrorist organization because, the government alleged, they were providing assistance to Hamas in the Occupied Territories. The government seized more than $5 million in HLF assets, and all of its records.

The case against HLF primarily revolves around donations to various charity (Zakat) committees throughout the West Bank and Gaza. These committees consist of members of the local Palestinian community and include individuals of various sociopolitical affiliations. Other non-Muslim organizations in the US and elsewhere also fund projects through Zakat committees because, they say, these groups provide an efficient means of disbursing assistance to humanitarian projects.

In the Dallas courtroom, prosecutors and HLF defense lawyers have clashed over whether jurors should see documents that Israeli soldiers seized during raids of Palestinian organizations.

In what could be a 'first' in the US legal system, two Israeli agents testified using pseudonyms that HLF was part of a global network of organizations that raised money from Muslims throughout the world and funneled it to Hamas.

Prosecutors believe the documents seized by Israeli soldiers show that HLF leaders knew they were sending millions of dollars to groups controlled by Hamas.

Defense attorneys have tried to cast doubt on the authenticity and significance of the documents, which included pamphlets, brochures and posters that are presumably pro-Hamas. Prosecutors said documents seized from the security offices of the Palestinian Authority contained information on Hamas' funding, including from Holy Land. Defense lawyers suggested that the evidence did not meet the standards for trial in a US court.

OMB Watch says the HLF prosecution has provided a glimpse into the government's use of evidence to justify seizure and freezing of charitable assets in the name of the war of terrorism. It charges that the case appears to depend on questionable foreign intelligence information and faulty translations.

Prior to the start of the jury trial, HLF brought a civil lawsuit against the government, seeking to overturn the terrorist designation. It was unsuccessful, principally because the appeals court refused to allow review of the Treasury Department's evidence and HLF being unable to present evidence on its own behalf.

In July 2004, HLF requested an investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General, alleging the FBI used erroneous translations of sensitive Israeli intelligence material as the crux of its case. But later the same day, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment against HLF and its seven top officials, charging them with money laundering and providing material support to Hamas.

In pre-trial filings in the criminal case, the prosecution disclosed it has 21 binders with over 8,000 pages of Israeli intelligence information, according to the Los Angeles Times, which noted that the Israeli government effectively controls what prosecutors can reveal to the public.

In a major error, 14 volumes of classified material were released to defense attorneys by mistake, and the judge refused the prosecution's motion to compel return of the documents. Instead, they now sit in the judge's office. While defense attorneys are forbidden from commenting on the contents of the files, the Dallas Morning News reported that "the information bolstered their case."

The FBI documents rely on the Israeli material to establish two claims central to the prosecution: grants were made to local charities that support Hamas, and funds were earmarked for families of suicide bombers. But none of the local charities named in the indictment have been designated as supporters of terrorism by the Treasury or State Departments.

The FBI claim is apparently based on a Bureau memo quoting the manager of HLF's Jerusalem office as saying the money was "channeled to Hamas." However, HLF attorneys say the Arabic to Hebrew to English translation should correctly say there is "no connection."

The indictment also claims that funds were earmarked for families of suicide bombers, but HLF's defenders say the allegations are based on faulty translations and incorrect use of the term "martyr." In the Middle East, defense attorneys explain, the term "martyr" refers to a broad category of people who die an early and unnatural death, not just suicide bombers.

In a related development, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which was named as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the HLF prosecution, asked the court to remove the Washington-based group's name, and those of several hundred other similarly named Muslim individuals and institutions.

And the National Association of Muslim Lawyers and the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys wrote to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales objecting to the list and saying it could lead to increased discrimination against American Muslims.

The CAIR brief charges that "The Fifth Amendment was violated because the public naming of the unindicted co-conspirators damaged their reputation, good name, and economic well-being, without offering a forum for vindication, and without a legitimate governmental reason for doing so. The First Amendment was violated because the governmental action of publicly naming the unindicted co-conspirators chilled the expressive associational activities of the unindicted co-conspirators and the government does not have a substantially related compelling interest for their action"

It said the practice of naming unindicted co-conspirators should be proscribed from the outset. "Such a practice should be per se unconstitutional, because once the government publicizes the names of the unindicted co-conspirators, the damage to their reputations, economic well-being, and expressive associations is done. . ."

Legal analysts say designating an "unindicted co-conspirator" makes it easier for the government to gain access to their records.

Most civil liberties advocates believe that the principal problems with the government's actions against Muslim-oriented charities stem from US law and its application by the government. For example, as David Cole points out, "The use of secret evidence means that the government never has to show that the groups engaged in any illegitimate activities in a publicly transparent way."

He charges that "Under the PATRIOT Act amendments to general-purpose civil forfeitures, which may apply to IEEPA, the government can even offer evidence that would otherwise be inadmissible if a court finds that complying with the Federal Rules of Evidence would jeopardize national security, and deems the evidence 'reliable'."

In shutting down Muslim charities in United States, he says, the government "invokes an obscure administrative regime that allows it to bypass the criminal process altogether. Under IEEPA, the president has unilaterally banned all transactions with the charities, frozen millions of dollars, and effectively closed them down, all without a criminal conviction, a criminal charge, or even an administrative hearing."

OMB Watch agrees. "Shutting down an organization does not require formal determination of wrongdoing. It requires a single piece of paper, signed by a midlevel government official. Although in practice a number of agencies typically review and agree to the action, there is no formal administrative process, let alone any adjudication of guilt," it asserts.

Cole and many other civil liberties advocates are calling for changes in the enabling legislation when Congress returns from its August recess next week.

But most Congress-watchers believe that Republicans are likely to stand with the Bush Administration on this issue. And they say that Democrats do not see the issue as any kind of vote-winner as the 2008 elections approach, and are fearful that any perceived support of American Muslims will cast them as being "soft on terrorism."

As for American Muslims, awaiting the start of Ramadan, their charitable giving dilemma is summed up by Anwar Kazmi, the owner of a software business in the Boston area.

"We're taught that this is not even our money; God has given you things and others have a share in what you have. If you don't give, it's like saying, 'I'm not going to pray'. "

END