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Homeland Security Chief Nominee Chertoff Oversaw Detention
of Hundreds of Arabs and Muslims After 9/11
Bush Appoints Arch-Conservative Claude Allen As Chief Domestic
Policy Adviser
Unprecedented Security Preparations For Bush Inauguration
James Forman 1928-2005: Civil Rights Pioneer Dies At 76
Homeland Security Chief Nominee Chertoff Oversaw
Detention of Hundreds of Arabs and Muslims After 9/11
President Bush nominated federal judge Michael Chertoff,
a former prosecutor and architect of the USA Patriot Act,
to replace Tom Ridge as secretary of Homeland Security. We
speak with DC lawyer Elaine Cassel and political journalist
Doug Ireland.
President Bush nominated federal judge Michael Chertoff,
a former prosecutor and architect of the USA Patriot Act,
to replace Tom Ridge as secretary of Homeland Security. He
announced the nomination yesterday at the White House.
- President Bush, announcing the nomination for Michael
Chertoff as Homeland Security chief, January 11, 2005.
President Bush yesterday at the White House. Chertoff served
as assistant attorney general at the Justice Department under
John Ashcroft in the months following the 9/11 attacks and
also gave congressional testimony arguing for passage of the
Patriot Act. After Bush announced his nomination yesterday,
Chertoff spoke about his role in the 9/11 investigation.
- Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security nominee speaking
at the White House, January 11, 2005.
Michael Chertoff, the nominee for secretary of Homeland Security
speaking yesterday at the White House. As an assistant attorney
general in the months after the attacks, Chertoff helped oversee
the detention of hundreds Muslim and Arab men without pressing
charges by using the "material witness" statute.
A subsequent report by the Justice Department's inspector
general determined that immigrants were rounded up in a "indiscriminate
and haphazard manner," held for months while denied access
to attorneys and sometimes mistreated behind bars.
The American Civil Liberties Union said yesterday in a statement
"We are troubled that [Chertoff"s] public record
suggests he sees the Bill of Rights as an obstacle to national
security, rather than a guidebook for how to do security properly."
But Chertoff has also been critical of the Bush administration"s
post Sept. 11 policies. Last year he published a piece in
the Weekly Standard criticizing the policy of indefinitely
jailing people as "enemy combatants" without giving
the detained access to the courts.
In the early years of his career, Chertoff was a clerk to
Supreme Court Justice William Brennan Jr. He later joined
the US attorney's office in New York where he prosecuted mob
figures alongside Rudy Giuliani.
In the mid-1990s he was Republican counsel for the Senate
committee that investigated the Whitewater affair involving
former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary. He has
been an appeals court judge for the 3rd Circuit based in Philadelphia
since June 2003 after he was confirmed by 88-1 in the Senate.
The sole vote against him that day - as well as in his 95-1
confirmation to head the criminal division in 2001 - came
from Hillary Clinton.
- Doug Ireland,
longtime political journalist and media critic. He has been
a columnist for The Nation magazine, Village Voice, the
New York Observer and the Paris daily Liberation. He is
also a contributing editor of POZ, the monthly for the HIV-positive
community.
Bush Appoints Arch-Conservative Claude Allen As Chief
Domestic Policy Adviser
President Bush appointed arch-conservative Claude Allen
as his new chief domestic policy adviser. Journalist Doug
Ireland describes Allen as "a notorious homophobe, a
ferocious enemy of abortion and an opponent of safe-sex education
who for years has been one of the AIDS community's principal
enemies."
In an article titled "The Bush Theocracy," journalist
Doug Ireland writes:
"President Bush's appointment of his new chief domestic-policy
adviser, Claude Allen - a notorious homophobe, a ferocious
enemy of abortion and an opponent of safe-sex education who
for years has been one of the AIDS community's principal enemies
- is a huge victory for the social reactionaries of the Christian
right.
"Allen, who was named to his new position in the White
House last week, had previously been a top aide at the Department
of Health and Human Services (HHS). He was placed there by
Karl Rove as a watchdog on then - HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson,
who had an exaggerated reputation as a "moderate"
and who wasn't entirely trusted by Rove to carry out - by
administrative order - the social agenda of the Christian
right, a key part of Rove's successful plan to mobilize millions
of Christer voters for Bush's re-election."
- Doug Ireland,
longtime radical political journalist and media critic.
He has been a columnist for The Nation magazine, Village
Voice, the New York Observer and the Paris daily Liberation.
He is also a contributing editor of POZ, the monthly for
the HIV-positive community.
Unprecedented Security Preparations For Bush Inauguration
An unprecedented level of security is planned for George
W. Bush's inauguration on Jan. 20, including six thousand
police officers, 2,500 military personnel, and dozens of federal
security agencies on patrol.
Outgoing Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge has promised an
unprecedented level of security for George W Bush's inauguration
on Jan. 20. He spoke to reporters yesterday at a news conference
near the Capitol, where Bush will take the oath on the West
Front.
- Tom Ridge, outgoing Homeland Security adviser speaking
in Washington DC, January 11, 2005.
Ridge went on the detail some of the security plans for the
inauguration which include six thousand police officers, 2,500
military personnel, and dozens of federal security agencies
on patrol. Mobile command vehicles will also be set up along
with round-the-clock surveillance of key facilities and a
record number of canine bomb teams. Blackhawk helicopters
and fighters will patrol the skies, and the Coast Guard plans
to step up security on the Potomac River. Ridge likened the
resources to those used during the political conventions last
year.
The Federal Aviation Administration announced a 23-mile radius
no-fly zone around Reagan National, Dulles and Baltimore-Washington
International airports.
Protest groups complain that the security arrangements are
preventing them from mounting effective demonstrations. Even
a pro-Bush group, freerepublic.com, yesterday criticized a
Secret Service edict that prevented members from waving miniature
American flags during the inaugural parade.
- Doug Ireland,
longtime radical political journalist and media critic.
He has been a columnist for The Nation magazine, Village
Voice, the New York Observer and the Paris daily Liberation.
He is also a contributing editor of POZ, the monthly for
the HIV-positive community.
James Forman 1928-2005: Civil Rights Pioneer Dies
At 76
Civil rights organizer James Forman has died at the age
of 76. In the early 1960s he served as executive secretary
of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and was seen
as a major strategist within the civil rights movement. We
hear a 1969 speech by James Forman and we speak with former
field secretary for SNCC Robert Moses and Rep. John Lewis
(D-GA).
Civil rights organizer James Forman has died at the age
of 76. In the early 1960s he served as executive secretary
of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He
was seen as a major strategist within the civil rights movement.
He helped plan the 1963 March on Washington and organized
Freedom Summer in 1964.
While registering voters and organizing protests in the South
he was repeatedly harassed, beaten and jailed. He once wrote
"Accumulating experiences with Southern 'law and order'
were turning me into a full-fledged revolutionary."
After leaving SNCC, he temporarily moved to Africa and became
one of the first to call for reparations to pay to African
Americans. He made reparations an issue in May 1969 when he
interrupted a Sunday church service at New York's Riverside
Church. He demanded white churches pay $500 million in reparations.
Also in 1969, he helped organize the Black Economic Development
Conference in Detroit, where a "Black Manifesto"
was adopted. In 1972 Forman published his best-known book
"The Making of Black Revolutionaries."
He continued his activism until this year. In July he traveled
to Boston during the Democratic National Convention to take
part in a protest organized by the D.C. Democratic delegation
to call for statehood.
- Robert Moses,former field secretary for SNCC, the Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. In 1964, he organized
Freedom Summer in Mississippi. He joins us on the phone
from Jackson Mississippi where he now runs a math literacy
project called The Algebra Project.
- James Forman, excerpt of his speech, "The Dynamics
of the Black Manifesto" at the University of Pennsylvania,
October 1969.
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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