Hedges is the author of many books including the just out in paperback Death of the Liberal Class which we selected as one of the ten most important books of the last ten years and a top ten book of the year in 2010 and in 2011 in Martha and Shirley's survey of The Common Ills community. He is also suing President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta over the NDAA. We've previously noted Hedges discussing this lawsuit on Black Agenda Radio with host Glen Ford. Last week, he was on Law and Disorder Radio discussing the lawsuit with attorneys and hosts Heidi Boghosian and Michael S. Smith. Excerpt.
Michael Smith: The National Defense Authorization Act was signed by President Obama on December 31st of last year and takes effect this coming March. The act authorizes the military to begin domestic policing. The military can detain indefinitely without trial any US citizen deemed to be a terrorist or an accessory to terrorism. Vague language in the bill such as "substantially supported" or "directly supported" or "associated forces" is used. We're joined today by returning guest Chris Hedges in his capacity as a plantiff in a lawsuit that he's just filed against President Barack Obama with respect to the National Defense Authorization Act and its language about rounding up even American citizens and salting them away forever.
Heidi Boghosian: Chris, welcome to Law and Disorder.
Chris Hedges: Thank you.
Heidi Boghosian: Can you talk about the significance of codifying the NDAA into law essentially several over-reaching practices that the executive has been implementing for awhile now?
Chris Hedges: That's correct but it's been implementing those practices through a radical interpretation of the 2001 law, The Authorization to Use Military Force Act. You remember old John Yoo was Bush's legal advisor. It was under the auspices of this act that Jose Padilla who is a US citizen was held for three and a half years in a military brig. Remember, he was supposedly one of the other hijackers that never made it to a plane. Stripped of due process. And it's under that old act that the executive branch, Barack Obama, permits himself to serve as judge, jury and executioner and order the assassination of a US citizen, the Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
Michael Smith: Two weeks later his 16-year-old son.
Chris Hedges: Yes, exactly. So what this does is it essentially codfies this kind of behavior into law. It overturns over 200 years of legal precedent so that the military is allowed to engage in domestic policing and there are a couple of very disturbing aspects in the creation of this legislation. One of them is that [US Senator] Dianne Feinstein had proposed that US citiens be exempt from this piece of legislation and both the Obama White House and the Democratic Party rejected that. Now Obama issued a signing statement saying that this will not be used against American citizens but the fact is legally it can be used against American citizens. There was an opportunity for them to protect American citizens and to protect due process and they chose not to do that.
Michael Smith: Well he also announced that he was going to close Guantanamo.
Chris Hedges: Right, so it's very disingenuous.
Heidi Boghosian: And signing statements really carry no legal force.
Chris Hedges. Right. And if they wanted to protect basic civil liberties, they certainly had a chance to do so and it was there decision not to do that. I mean, the other thing that's disturbing is that it expands this endless war on terror. So the 2001 act is targeted towards groups that are affiliated or part of al Qaeda. Now it's groups that didn't even exist in 2001. There are all sorts of nebulous terms like "associated forces," "substantially supported." When you look at the criteria by which Americans can be investigated by our security and surveillance state, it's amorphous and frightening: People who have lost fingers on the hand, people who hoard more than seven days worth of food in their house, people who have water-proof ammunition. I mean, I always say I come from rural parts of Maine. That's probably most of my family.
[Laughter.]
Chris Hedges: It's a very short step to adding the obstructionist tactics of the Occupy movement.
Michael Smith: Well that's what we've wanted to ask you because we've thought all along with the beginning of this war on terrorism that ultimately these laws stripping us of our Constitutional rights would be used against the social protest movements at home and the latest development is absolutely chilling and we wanted to ask you about that.
Chris Hedges: We don't know what the motives are. We do know that all the intelligence agencies as well as the Pentagon opposed this legislation. Robert Muller, the head of the FBI, actually went before Congress and said that if it was passed it would make the FBI's work in terms of investigating terrorism harder because it would make it harder to get people to cooperate once you hand the military that power. So I think it's interesting, to say the very least, that the various agencies that are being pulled into domestic policing -- especially the Pentagon -- didn't push for the bill. I don't know what the motives are but I know what the consequences are and that is that it hands to the corporate state weapons, the capacity to use the armed forces internally in ways that we have not seen for over two centuries. That is the consequence of the bill. What are the motives? You know I haven't gone down and reported it in Washington.
Heidi Boghosian: Chris, you know I'm thinking of the Supreme Court Case Humanitarian Law Project and the notion "providing material support." [Center for Constitutional Rights analysis here -- text and video.] And in that case it was also very vague and things that seemed benign could be construed as providing support but it strikes me that under this piece of legislation also the notion of associating with others that the government may deem terrorists becomes possibly vague.
Chris Hedges: Well it is vague. And that's what's so frightening. And the lawsuit was proposed by Civil Rights attorneys Carl Mayer and Bruce Afran who approached me and said that I needed a credible plantiff. Now because I had been the Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times and because I was in the Middle East for seven years I spent considerable time with both individuals and organizations that are considered by the US State Dept to be either terrorists or terrorist groups. That would include Hamas, Islamic Jihad in Gaza, the Kurdistan Workers Party -- or the PKK as it's known in southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq. All of these organizations -- I mean, I used to go to Tunis and have dinner with Yasser Arafat [President of the Palestinian National Authority from 1996 until his death in 2004] and Abu Jihad [the PLO's Khalil al-Wair] when they were branded as international terrorists. And there are no exemptions in this piece of legislation for journalists. And the attorneys felt that I was a credible plantiff because of that. We have already seen under the 2001 law, a persecution of not only Muslim Americans in this country but Muslim American organiations -- in particular charity organizations and mostly charity organizations that support the Palestinians. And under this legislation, it is certainly conceivable that not only -- many of these organizations have been shut down, their bank accounts have been frozen, their organizers have been persecuted -- but under this legislation they're essentially able to be branded as terrorists, stripped of due process, thrown into a military brig and held, in the language of the legislation, until the end of hostilities -- whenever that is.