American Civil Liberties Union

As we noted yesterday, we are pleased that the White House has initiated a government-wide review of counterterrorism training materials, after the ACLU uncovered numerous FBI examples of training materials that falsely and inappropriately portray Arab and Muslim communities as monolithic, alien, backward, violent and supporters of terrorism. Subsequent reports by Wired revealed this problem existed in the Departments of Justice and Defense as well. Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the ACLU of Northern California and the Asian Law Caucus show that FBI use of these erroneous and biased materials spans from at least 2003 to 2011, and has been an integral part of the agency’s training programs.

A series of leaked "intelligence" reports have caused quite a dust-up over the last several weeks. A Texas fusion center warned about a terrorist threat from "the international far Left," the Department of Homeland Security and a Missouri fusion center warned of threats posed by right-wing ideologues, and a Virginia fusion center saw threats from across the political spectrum and called certain colleges and religious groups "nodes of radicalization." These are all examples of domestic security gone wrong. The way for local police to secure their communities against real threats is to focus on criminal activities and the individuals involved in criminal activities.

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

Remember Esequiel Hernandez, Jr.? "Junior," as he was known, was an American teenager shot and killed in 1997 by U.S. Marines as he tended a flock of goats near his home one evening in Redford, Texas. The Marines, fully armed and dressed in camouflage ghillie suits, were operating on U.S. soil as part of a covert counter-drug mission supporting the Border Patrol. They were not supposed to come into contact with civilians; rather they were just to observe and report what they saw to the Border Patrol. But Junior had a .22 caliber rifle with him, and it appears he fired at least one shot from it that evening. What he was shooting at isn't clear. The Marines looked more like tumbleweeds than men, and none of them were hit. But as war-fighters, Marines are trained to engage a threat until it is destroyed, without asking a lot of questions. While this mission orientation is essential in combat, it is a poor fit with the shades-of-gray world of domestic policing. In any event, they followed their military "rules of engagement," advanced their position and returned fire, killing Junior with a bullet to the chest.

The reason I bring this incident up is that it demonstrates the risks of using military forces in domestic law enforcement missions. From their colonial experience, the framers of the Constitution recognized the threat a standing army posed to democracy, and they sought to establish a government that guaranteed civilian control over the military. This ideal was finally codified after the Civil War through the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibited the Army from engaging in law enforcement activities.

The Posse Comitatus Act should have prevented what happened to Junior. But Congress has weakened Posse Comitatus over the years to involve the military in drug enforcement, border control and all sorts of other "domestic support" operations. Today, the number of domestic missions the military is accepting and the number of troops it is deploying inside the U.S. is drastically increasing, making future tragedies like Junior's only more likely.

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

Since its inception 100 years ago this week, FBI has been assigned with an increasingly difficult task: protecting the public welfare in a free and democratic society.

Throughout its history, the FBI has achieved moments of glory and succumbed to periods of shame. At its best it has achieved some praiseworthy accomplishments — the enforcement of civil rights, significant disruption of organized crime, and the arrest of violent criminals. But at its worst, it has resembled a force of "political police" targeting those who seek change, whether in the Palmer Raids, the Red Scares, or in the widespread abuses of COINTELPRO and surveillance of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and other nonviolent activists.