if books could talk

[Guest guest]

Gagged Library Exec Speaks Out

By Matthew Rothschild

June 3, 2006

 

George Christian is the executive director of Library

Connection, Inc., a nonprofit cooperative of more than two

dozen public and academic libraries in Connecticut.

 

Last summer, his office got an odd call. It wasn't from a

co-op member.

 

And it wasn't from a library patron. It was from the FBI.

 

One of Christian's staff answered the phone and then brought

him the news.

 

" We got a call from the FBI, they want to send us something

called a National Security Letter, and they asked who to

address it to, and I told them you, " the staffer informed

Christian, he recalls.

 

" I thought, National Security what? What's a National

Security Letter?

 

Until that moment, I'd never heard those three words,

National Security Letter. I never knew there was such a

thing. I had no inkling whatsoever, " Christian says.

 

These letters are an extraordinarily powerful tool in the

hands of the FBI. Basically, they amount to subpoenas the

Justice Department issues by itself, without having to go to

a judge for approval. When they were first authorized in the

1970s, the FBI was required to have " 'specific and

articulable' reasons to believe the records it gathered in

secret belonged to a terrorist or spy, " Barton Gellman

reported for The Washington Post on November 6, 2005. But

thanks to the Patriot Act, the FBI can slap these letters

not only on terrorist suspects but on anyone who is

" relevant " to a national security investigation, even those

" who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies, " Gellman

wrote. The Patriot Act authorizes the FBI to use these

National Security Letters to obtain " transactional records "

from financial institutions. And the 2004 Intelligence

Authorization Act expanded the scope of these letters beyond

financial institutions to include car dealers, travel

agents, real estate agents, pawnbrokers, and others. The FBI

is churning these National Security Letters out at the rate

of 30,000 a year, Gellman discovered.

 

Christian says the phone call alerting him that he was about

to get such a letter gave him enough time to research the

issue and to decide that " this was not something I wanted to

cooperate with. "

 

He said he was torn.

 

" On the one hand, I think I'm a good citizen, " he says.

" Certainly, the average citizen would want to cooperate.

Half of me was saying, help your country out. But in the

back of my mind, I was thinking, wait a minute, these aren't

the rules this country was founded on. "

 

When two FBI agents showed up at his office and handed him

the National Security Letter, he told them why he objected.

He says they didn't demand the information on the spot, " so

we politely parted company. "

 

That specific letter, according to Gellman, sought " all

r information, billing information, and access logs

of any person " who used a specific computer at a nearby library.

 

While Christian says he wasn't scared by the FBI encounter,

he avers that it had its moments.

 

" The first intimidating thing was the fact that this letter

made really clear that I could discuss receipt of this

letter with no one, " he says. " And the second thing was the

good cop, bad cop routine. One FBI agent was professionally

dressed, in a coat and tie, and was mild-mannered, and the

other one was casually dressed and muscular and didn't speak

much at all. "

 

Christian contacted an attorney who had worked with his

company before, and she directed him to the ACLU, which was

glad to take his case and that of the three librarians on

his executive board: Barbara Bailey, Peter Chase, and Janet

Nocek. (Chase, by the way, is chairman of the intellectual

freedom committee of the Connecticut Library Association.)

 

These four plaintiffs were not allowed even to enter the

courtroom in Bridgeport, Connecticut, when their case was

first heard.

 

" I wanted to be there, " Christian says. " But the government

said no, I can't be there, because everyone will know who

got the letter. "

 

Judge Janet Hall arranged for the four to watch the

proceedings by remote from the federal district court in

Hartford, about sixty miles away.

 

Christian and his colleagues were suing on two grounds: to

declare the National Security Letter unconstitutional, and

to lift the gag order so they could at least publicly

acknowledge that they had been hit by such a letter.

 

Last fall, Judge Hall ruled in their favor on the gag order,

in part because news outlets had already identified the

group as a result of the government's own sloppiness in

redacting documents, Christian says.

 

However, Judge Hall stayed her decision upon the

government's request for appeal. Christian said the gag was

particularly painful at that time because he wanted to

testify before Congress, which was debating renewing the

Patriot Act.

 

But the government dragged the appeal out until after

Congress renewed the Patriot Act.

 

This rankles Christian.

 

" They were really happy to have us gagged while the debate

was going on in Congress, " says Christian. " As soon as that

was over, although our circumstances hadn't changed,

suddenly they said there's no point in continuing the gag

anyway. Clearly here they were trying to keep me from going

before Congress. That's like allowing me to call the fire

department only after the building has burned to the ground. "

 

Chase feels the same way. " The government was telling

Congress that it didn't use the Patriot Act against

libraries and that no one's rights had been violated, " he

said in an ACLU press statement. " I felt that I just could

not be part of this fraud being foisted on our nation. "

 

" Our clients were gagged by the government at a time when

Congress needed to hear their voices the most, " added Ann

Beeson, the ACLU's associate legal director, in that press

release. " This Administration has repeatedly shown that it

will hide behind the cloak of national security to silence

its critics and cover up embarrassing facts. "

 

Even today, Christian and his colleagues are not free to

discuss the content of the National Security Letter.

 

" We can now say that our organization was the recipient of a

National Security Letter and that the letter requested

library records, " says Christian. " But that's it. We can't

tell you when we got the letter, we can't tell you who

signed it, we can't tell you what the letter requested us to

turn over. I can't get into anything. "

 

Christian does not, by any means, believe he has compromised

national security by not cooperating with the FBI.

 

" I have no worry whatsoever, " he says. " Because if it was

really that important the FBI could have gone at any time

before a judge and said, 'Here's the evidence. We want a

warrant.' They never did that. So I don't lose any sleep

over it. "

 

Nor does Christian believe he's doing something

exceptionally heroic.

 

" I don't think I've done anything extraordinary here, " he

says. " I just felt I did what anyone would have done in my

circumstances. The only time I felt that maybe I'm on the

wrong end of the telescope here was when Gellman reported

that 30,000 National Security Letters are issued a year, and

I and the ISP in New York are the only ones fighting this? I

thought that was bizarre. " (The ACLU is representing that

Internet Service Provider, as well.)

 

Christian believes that " the situation is getting out of

hand " with those 30,000 National Security Letters. " If you

don't count Sundays, that's about 100 a day, " he says. " And

there's no evidence they're apprehending 100 potential

terrorists a day -- or even one a day. "

 

http://progressive.org/mag_mc060306

 

 

I don't wanna be no war hero

Don't want a movie made about me

I don't wanna be no war hero

Just get away from the madness I see