"Free-Speech Zone"
The Administration Quarantines Dissent
By James Bovard
On Dec. 6, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft informed the Senate
Judiciary Committee, "To those who scare peace-loving people
with phantoms of lost liberty ... your tactics only aid terrorists,
for they erode our national unity and ... give ammunition to America's
enemies." Some commentators feared that Ashcroft's statement,
which was vetted beforehand by top lawyers at the Justice Department,
signaled that this White House would take a far more hostile view
towards opponents than did recent presidents. And indeed, some Bush
administration policies indicate that Ashcroft's comment was not
a mere throwaway line.
When Bush travels around the United States, the Secret Service visits
the location ahead of time and orders local police to set up "free
speech zones" or "protest zones" where people opposed
to Bush policies (and sometimes sign-carrying supporters) are quarantined.
These zones routinely succeed in keeping protesters out of presidential
sight and outside the view of media covering the event.
When Bush came to the Pittsburgh area on Labor Day 2002, 65-year-old
retired steel worker Bill Neel was there to greet him with a sign
proclaiming, "The Bush family must surely love the poor, they
made so many of us." The local police, at the Secret Service's
behest, set up a "designated free-speech zone" on a baseball
field surrounded by a chain-link fence a third of a mile from the
location of Bush's speech. The police cleared the path of the motorcade
of all critical signs, though folks with pro-Bush signs were permitted
to line the president's path. Neel refused to go to the designated
area and was arrested for disorderly conduct; the police also confiscated
his sign. Neel later commented, "As far as I'm concerned, the
whole country is a free speech zone. If the Bush administration has
its way, anyone who criticizes them will be out of sight and out
of mind."
At Neel's trial, police detective John Ianachione testified that
the Secret Service told local police to confine "people that
were there making a statement pretty much against the president and
his views" in a so-called free speech area. Paul Wolf, one of
the top officials in the Allegheny County Police Department, told Salon that
the Secret Service "come in and do a site survey, and say, ‘Here's
a place where the people can be, and we'd like to have any protesters
put in a place that is able to be secured.'" Pennsylvania district
judge Shirley Rowe Trkula threw out the disorderly conduct charge
against Neel, declaring, "I believe this is America. Whatever
happened to ‘I don't agree with you, but I'll defend to the
death your right to say it'?"
Similar suppressions have occurred during Bush visits to Florida.
A recent St. Petersburg Times editorial noted, "At a
Bush rally at Legends Field in 2001, three demonstrators - two of
whom were grandmothers - were arrested for holding up small handwritten
protest signs outside the designated zone. And last year, seven protesters
were arrested when Bush came to a rally at the USF Sun Dome. They
had refused to be cordoned off into a protest zone hundreds of yards
from the entrance to the Dome." One of the arrested protesters
was a 62-year-old man holding up a sign, "War is good business.
Invest your sons." The seven were charged with trespassing, "obstructing
without violence and disorderly conduct."
Police have repressed protesters during several Bush visits to the
St. Louis area as well. When Bush visited on Jan. 22, 2003, 150 people
carrying signs were shunted far away from the main action and effectively
quarantined. Denise Lieberman of the ACLU of Eastern Missouri commented, "No
one could see them from the street. In addition, the media were not
allowed to talk to them. The police would not allow any media inside
the protest area and wouldn't allow any of the protesters out of
the protest zone to talk to the media." When Bush stopped by
a Boeing plant to talk to workers, Christine Mains and her five-year-old
daughter disobeyed orders to move to a small protest area far from
the action. Police arrested Mains and took her and her crying daughter
away in separate squad cars.
The Justice Department is now prosecuting Brett Bursey, who was
arrested for holding a "No War for Oil" sign at a Bush
visit to Columbia, S.C. Local police, acting under Secret Service
orders, established a "free speech zone" half a mile from
where Bush would speak. Bursey was standing amid hundreds of people
carrying signs praising the president. Police told Bursey to remove
himself to the "free speech zone."
Bursey refused and was arrested. Bursey said that he asked the policeman
if "it was the content of my sign, and he said, ‘Yes, sir,
it's the content of your sign that's the problem.'" Bursey stated
that he had already moved 200 yards from where Bush was supposed
to speak. Bursey later complained, "The problem was, the restricted
area kept moving. It was wherever I happened to be standing."
Bursey was charged with trespassing. Five months later, the charge
was dropped because South Carolina law prohibits arresting people
for trespassing on public property. But the Justice Department -
in the person of U.S. Attorney Strom Thurmond Jr. - quickly jumped
in, charging Bursey with violating a rarely enforced federal law
regarding "entering a restricted area around the President of
the United States." If convicted, Bursey faces a six-month trip
up the river and a $5000 fine. Federal magistrate Bristow Marchant
denied Bursey's request for a jury trial because his violation is
categorized as a "petty offense." Some observers believe
that the feds are seeking to set a precedent in a conservative state
such as South Carolina that could then be used against protesters
nationwide.
Bursey's trial took place on Nov. 12 and 13. His lawyers sought
the Secret Service documents they believed would lay out the official
policies on restricting critical speech at presidential visits. The
Bush administration sought to block all access to the documents,
but Marchant ruled that the lawyers could have limited access. Bursey
sought to subpoena John Ashcroft and Karl Rove to testify. Bursey
lawyer Lewis Pitts declared, "We intend to find out from Mr.
Ashcroft why and how the decision to prosecute Mr. Bursey was reached." The
magistrate refused, however, to enforce the subpoenas. Secret Service
agent Holly Abel testified at the trial that Bursey was told to move
to the "free speech zone" but refused to co-operate. Magistrate
Marchant is expected to issue his decision in December.
The feds have offered some bizarre rationales for hog-tying protesters.
Secret Service agent Brian Marr explained to National Public Radio, "These
individuals may be so involved with trying to shout their support
or non-support that inadvertently they may walk out into the motorcade
route and be injured. And that is really the reason why we set these
places up, so we can make sure that they have the right of free speech,
but, two, we want to be sure that they are able to go home at the
end of the evening and not be injured in any way." Except for
having their constitutional rights shredded.
Marr's comments are a mockery of this country's rich heritage of
vigorous protests. Somehow, all of a sudden, after George W. Bush
became president people became so stupid that federal agents had
to cage them to prevent them from walking out in front of speeding
vehicles.
The ACLU, along with several other organizations, is suing the Secret
Service for what it charges is a pattern-and-practice of suppressing
protesters at Bush events in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Michigan,
New Jersey, New Mexico, Texas, and elsewhere. The ACLU's Witold Walczak
said of the protesters, "The individuals we are talking about
didn't pose a security threat; they posed a political threat."
The Secret Service is duty-bound to protect the president. But it
is ludicrous to presume that would-be terrorists are lunkheaded enough
to carry anti-Bush signs when carrying pro-Bush signs would give
them much closer access. And even a policy of removing all people
carrying signs - as has happened in some demonstrations - is pointless,
since potential attackers would simply avoid carrying signs. Presuming
that terrorists are as unimaginative and predictable as the average
federal bureaucrat is not a recipe for presidential longevity.
The Bush administration's anti-protester bias proved embarrassing
for two American allies with long traditions of raucous free speech,
resulting in some of the most repressive restrictions in memory in
free countries. When Bush visited Australia in October, Sydney
Morning Herald columnist Mark Riley observed, "The basic
right of freedom of speech will adopt a new interpretation during
the Canberra visits this week by the US President, George Bush, and
his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao. Protesters will be free to speak
as much as they like just as long as they can't be heard." Demonstrators
were shunted to an area away from the Federal Parliament building
and prohibited from using any public address system in the area.
For Bush's recent visit to London, the White House demanded that
British police ban all protest marches, close down the center of
the city, and impose a "virtual three day shutdown of central
London in a bid to foil disruption of the visit by anti-war protesters," according
to Britain's Evening Standard. But instead of a "free
speech zone" - as such areas are labeled in the U.S. - the Bush
administration demanded an "exclusion zone" to protect
Bush from protesters' messages.
Such unprecedented restrictions did not inhibit Bush from portraying
himself as a champion of freedom during his visit. In a speech at
Whitehall on Nov. 19, Bush hyped the "forward strategy of freedom" and
declared, "We seek the advance of freedom and the peace that
freedom brings." Regarding the protesters, Bush sought to turn
the issue into a joke: "I've been here only a short time, but
I've noticed that the tradition of free speech - exercised with enthusiasm
- is alive and well here in London. We have that at home, too. They
now have that right in Baghdad, as well."
Attempts to suppress protesters become more disturbing in light
of the Homeland Security Department's recommendation that local police
departments view critics of the war on terrorism as potential terrorists.
In a May 2003 terrorist advisory, the Homeland Security Department
warned local law enforcement agencies to keep an eye on anyone who "expressed
dislike of attitudes and decisions of the U.S. government." If
police vigorously followed this advice, millions of Americans could
be added to the official lists of "suspected terrorists."
Protesters have claimed that police have assaulted them during demonstrations
in New York, Washington, and elsewhere. Film footage of a February
New York antiwar rally showed what looked like a policeman on horseback
charging into peaceful aged Leftists. The neoconservative New
York Sun suggested in February 2003 that the New York Police
Department "send two witnesses along for each participant [in
an antiwar demonstration], with an eye toward preserving at least
the possibility of an eventual treason prosecution" since all
the demonstrators were guilty of "giving, at the very least,
comfort to Saddam Hussein."
One of the most violent government responses to an antiwar protest
occurred when local police and the federally funded California Anti-Terrorism
Task Force fired rubber bullets and tear gas at peaceful protesters
and innocent bystanders at the port of Oakland, injuring a number
of people. When the police attack sparked a geyser of media criticism,
Mike van Winkle, the spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism
Information Center told the Oakland Tribune, "You can
make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting
a war where the cause that's being fought against is international
terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest. You can almost
argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act." Van Winkle
justified classifying protesters like terrorists: "I've heard
terrorism described as anything that is violent or has an economic
impact, and shutting down a port certainly would have some economic
impact. Terrorism isn't just bombs going off and killing people."
Such aggressive tactics become more ominous in the light of the
Bush administration's advocacy, in its Patriot II draft legislation,
of nullifying all judicial consent decrees restricting state and
local police from spying on those groups who may oppose government
policies.
On May 30, 2002, Ashcroft effectively abolished restrictions on
FBI surveillance of Americans' everyday lives first imposed in 1976.
One FBI internal newsletter encouraged FBI agents to conduct more
interviews with antiwar activists "for plenty of reasons, chief
of which it will enhance the paranoia endemic in such circles and
will further service to get the point across that there is an FBI
agent behind every mailbox." The FBI took a shotgun approach
towards protesters partly because of the FBI's "belief that
dissident speech and association should be prevented because they
were incipient steps towards the possible ultimate commission of
act which might be criminal," according to a Senate report.
On Nov. 23 news broke that the FBI is now actively conducting surveillance
of antiwar demonstrators - supposedly to "blunt potential violence
by extremist elements," according to a Reuters interview with
a federal law enforcement official. Given the FBI's expansive defintion
of "potential violence" in the past, this is a net that
could catch almost any group or individual who falls into official
disfavor.
The FBI is also urging local police to report suspicious activity
by protesters to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which is run by
the FBI. If local police take the hint and start pouring in the dirt,
the JTTF could soon be building a "Total Information Awareness"-lite
database on those antiwar groups and activists.
If the FBI publicly admits that it is surveilling antiwar groups
and urging local police to send in information on protestors, how
far might the feds go? It took over a decade after the first big
antiwar protests in the 1960s before the American people learned
the extent of FBI efforts to suppress and subvert public opposition
to the Vietnam War. Is the FBI now considering a similar order to
field offices as the one it sent in 1968, telling them to gather
information illustrating the "scurrilous and depraved nature
of many of the characters, activities habits, and living conditions
representative of New Left adherents" - but this time focused
on those who oppose Bush's Brave New World?
Is the administration seeking to stifle domestic criticism? Absolutely.
Is it carrying out a war on dissent? Probably not - yet. But the
trend lines in federal attacks on freedom of speech should raise
grave concerns to anyone worried about the First Amendment or about
how a future liberal Democratic president such as Hillary Clinton
might exploit the precedents that Bush is setting.
James Bovard is the author of Terrorism & Tyranny: Trampling
Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil.
