excerpt from Bill Moyers' interview

excerpt from Bill Moyers' interview with Chuck Lewis from the Center for
Public Integrity:

LEWIS: I see a lot of opportunism here around the fear and paranoia in
the wake of September 11th. And taking advantage of the insecurity that
we all feel today. And
that is, to me, incredibly offensive. And that's why a conversation
about it, there's 40 sections in this thing. The public needs to have a
sense what exactly are we getting
here. There needs to be a chewing over. This should not jam through
Congress. This should be out there and being � be talked about.

I mean the realm between public and private, between foreign and
domestic, all these things have morphed into the citizen against all of
this out there � this morass of
regulations and rules and intrusions. And at the same time they can come
after you, get your credit card data, your library records, your
Internet searching, everything.
And they'll decide whether or not you're a suspect or not.

Whether or not they like you. If you're a disfavored political group, or
from the wrong ethnic background, then you might become on the radar
screen of some folks that
you don't know about, you can't find out about, and they can do things.
They have � this is incredible power.

MOYERS: One of the provisions in here as I understand it is that the
government could actually strip citizenship from someone if � for
example, if you were found,
according to this, if you were found making what you thought was a
legitimate contribution to some non profit organization.

LEWIS: Right.

MOYERS: Foundation. And months from then, that foundation were deemed by
the government or that organization were deemed by the government to
have been in
some way supporting terrorists, you could lose your citizenship because
of your contribution, even if you didn't know�

LEWIS: That's right.

MOYERS: That you were contributing to an organization like that.

LEWIS: No, that's absolutely � they have that power. They can also
extradite all over world, even if we don't have treaties. I mean, some
of the things in here are �
strain credulity for legal scholars. They're not sure, they've never
seen these kinds of provisions trotted out. I mean, a lot of the
question is if it does pass Congress, what
would the courts do with it later.

I mean I think there are some legitimate issues there.

MOYERS: What do you make of this? This is the document that went from
the Department of Justice with this draft legislation to certain very
key people in government.
Among them, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and Vice President,
Richard Cheney, for their comments on this obviously confidential
document.

Why the Speaker of the House and the Vice President and not the
committee chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate or the
appropriate committee in the
House?

LEWIS: It's a way to say you've consulted Congress to some extent by
sending it to the Speaker and not really consulting Congress.

As far as I can tell, and we have not polled every member or anything
like that, but it appears that virtually no one on Capitol Hill, except
for the Speaker, has seen this
legislation. I'm talking about the people at the judiciary committees in
the House and Senate don't have this legislation. And have even been
kind of yanked around a little
bit for months about whether there will even be legislation.

MOYERS: The House Judiciary Committee actually asked the FBI a few
months ago how it has used the new powers that had been given to it
under the Patriot Act. And
the Justice department said, "We can't tell you that information, it's
classified."

And this prompted then-Congressman then Bob Barr, from Georgia, another
conservative, by the way, he said the attitude of the Justice Department
seems to be that even
Congress isn't entitled to know how they are using the authority that
Congress gave them.

LEWIS: It's incredible. I mean, if Congress doesn't have oversight over
the Justice Department and these programs, who does? That's how it's
supposed to work in our
constitution and in our set up for government.

MOYERS: That's one of your real concerns, isn't it? That there's no
oversight when secrecy is this tight.

LEWIS: Absolutely. The Congress is the people's chance to monitor the
executive branch. That is the only� it is the closest branch of
government to the people. The
House members are up for election every two years. If the House of
Representatives and the Congress in general cannot keep a watch on the
executive branch and cannot
be informed about their activities. There's something very serious here.

MOYERS: Chuck, I hear people out there in the audience thinking, you
know, I'm scared. We're � this is a new ballgame, to put it trivially.
War on terrorists, they came
on 9/11, we keep getting reports they're coming again, who knows where
it'll happen. Everybody's scared.

You guys are living in Lotus Land, you journalists talking about this
sort of thing. Because we really want the government to protect us from
another World Trade Center
attack on the Pentagon, which is not far from where your office is in
Washington.

LEWIS: Right.

MOYERS: What about that?

LEWIS: Look, I wanna be protected by the government as much as anyone.

But actually, in some ways that's beside the point. There are also
freedoms and rights and liberties that, you know, millions of Americas
have fought for over 200 years to
make sure that this is a special kind of country. And isn't it possible
that to be secure and have liberties?

Why give all the power and authority and have no oversight and
accountability. What are the safeguards. And that's the question.

MOYERS: When someone inside government, inside the Justice Department,
presumably, gives you a confidential document marked, "Not For
Distribution," The
Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, knowing that this
administration has been cracking down on watchdogs and leaks from inside
government, do you consider
this person a patriot?

LEWIS: I really do. I think it takes incredible guts to take something
that bothers someone, and for whatever reason, they feel they must give
it out. And they know
they're gonna be polygraphed, they're gonna be questioned. There's gonna
be a clampdown found, there's gonna be a witch-hunt after this occurs.
They could very likely
not only lose their job but-- maybe worse.

MOYERS: Be sued by the government?

LEWIS: Be sued by the government and otherwise ruined professionally.
That is the most incredible kind of courage. And I have an incredible
respect for anyone who
does that.

MOYERS: I should make this clear this is not marked "Top Secret" � this
is not a classified document. It is stamped "Confidential" but nobody is
betraying the Secrets
Act.

LEWIS: Yeah, that's right, I mean, I've � I'm glad to say that that's
right.

MOYERS: There was a story this week in Congressional Quarterly, which is
a very respected non-partisan journal in Washington. It says "Pentagon's
proposed changes
strike some as difficult, dangerous and destabilizing." And one of the
things Donald Rumsfeld wants is wavers of environmental laws so that
troops can conduct more
"realistic exercises."

And then this magazine, which is non-partisan, says this is part of the
administration's broad campaign to run the federal government more like
a private business. And
with private businesses you have more control over employees, you have
more control over information. Do you see that developing as a syndrome
of this administration?

LEWIS: I think it's incredible what's happening. I see a wholesale
assault on access to information in this country that has not really
been seen, I have to just say it, since
Richard Nixon.

When you look at the roll-backs of freedom of information, when you look
at things like meeting with energy companies with the Vice President.
It's simple things though
in government property with government officials getting paid by
taxpayer money and it's not available to the public.

When you see some of the things that we have talked about earlier with
reporters from detainees to military actions not being able to see
things. I see a lot of very
aggressive behavior by government officials towards the act of getting
information out and information itself. I think that we're in a very
unusual situation right now. And
it really worries me actually.

MOYERS: Chuck Lewis, Center for Public Integrity, thank you very much.

LEWIS: Thank you.
-- -Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
http://www.anaphoria.com
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