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The National Security State Is Killing Free Speech

Governments and institutions are using lawfare to shut down independent voices

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • August 30, 2024

It is interesting to hear President Joe Biden claim that democracy is at stake in the upcoming national election when he and his Democratic Party colleagues have done so much to hinder the free discussion of issues that should be considered important by the electorate. Joe has operated by fiat in his opening of America’s southern border to mass invasion by illegal immigrants and has committed the US to participation in two wars without any declaration of war or credible justification for entering the conflicts in terms of the security of the United States. More to the point, in terms of how it affects every American, Biden and company have run electoral campaigns based on the premise that his opponents were being assisted by the interference of unfriendly governments in the process. In reality, if outside interference in one’s election is a real problem, it is a crime that is more true of Joe’s best friend Israel rather than anything coming from Russia, China or Iran.

But the one subject that is part and parcel of electoral corruption that is not being discussed sufficiently is the cooption of the national police and intelligence agencies to make them de facto operatives of the party in power, most recently the Democrats. After the 2016 election, the use of the so-called deep state to blacken Donald Trump through allegations that surfaced from federal law enforcement acting in collusion with the Hillary Clinton campaign and some in the media was exposed. Due to that revelation, the concept of a deep state that operates independently of elections or elected officials began to take shape in the minds of many observers of the Washington scene.

The Biden administration has taken the incestuous relationship with its law enforcement and intelligence agencies even farther. It sought to establish a “Disinformation Governance Board” at the Department of Homeland Security which would have been empowered to denounce the credibility of citizens who were complaining about what the government was doing based on the fiction that what was taking place was deliberate disruption of the government using false information. This even applied to the increasingly heavy hand employed by the Bidens over education, where parents who expressed disagreement with Critical Race Theory and other woke content taught in the schools as well as the aggressive gender bending, were conveniently labeled “domestic terrorists.” In short, anyone who disagrees with government policy has become a “domestic” problem and will be confronted with the full employment of government resources to criminalize or create disincentives to such behavior which some might recall used to be referred to as “free speech.”

Fortunately, people are beginning to take notice of what is going on to create a world where governments actively conspire to eliminate criticism of what they do. It is all reminiscent of the torment of top journalist Julian Assange by the British and US governments over the course of over twelve years, five of which were in a top security prison, for the crime of having revealed details of questionable or even illegal official behavior by US soldiers in Iraq.

Two interesting uses of federal police resources to silence dissenters have occurred recently in the United States, involving politically prominent individuals who are being surveilled and harassed for little more than their expressed contrary views on America’s wars. They are Scott Ritter, a former Marine and weapons inspector, and Tulsi Gabbard, a former congressman from Hawaii and a reserve lieutenant colonel in that state’s National Guard. What has been done to them by the Biden Administration using as its tool of choice the nation’s security services is bizarre and almost unimaginable for those who still believe that the United States is a functioning democracy whose citizens’ rights are protected by a written constitution and a judicial system that enforces the laws without regard for who is in power or the pleading of special interests.

Ritter has had two recent encounters with the FBI. On June 3^rd he attempted to fly to Russia to speak at an international conference when he was stopped at the airport and had his passport taken under orders of the State Department. No explanation was given for the action and he was not given either a receipt or a warrant explaining the grounds for the seizure of the document. It has not since been returned. On August 7^th, 41 FBI agents arrived unannounced and proceeded to search Ritter’s New York state home. They confiscated documents and electronic communications devices. Interestingly, they had in their possession a thick file that contained copies of many of his email and phone messages, indicating that he had been under surveillance for quite some time. It is independently known that the FBI, NSA and CIA have global surveillance capabilities that enable them to monitor phones and emails for anyone, or, indeed, for everyone, in real time, so one might assume that Ritter was only one of their many victims.

The Gabbard case is even more bewildering because, though an active critic of the Ukraine war, Tulsi is a former Democratic Party congressman and army officer who was and is eminently respectable. She is reportedly being stalked by Transportation Security Administration’s air marshals, part of the agency’s Quiet Skies covert operation targeting suspected threats to aircraft and airports. Those who are under Quiet Skies surveillance have a printed SSSS on their airline boarding tickets, requires one to be taken aside before boarding for additional screening. Gabbard believes that placing her on the TSA Quiet Skies target list was “clearly an act of political retaliation. It’s no accident that I was placed on the Quiet Skies list the day after I did a prime-time interview warning the American people about… why Kamala Harris would be bad for our country if elected as President.” Gabbard observed that, despite her having served in the US Army for 21 years, “now my government is surveilling me as a potential domestic terrorist… forcing me to be forever looking over my shoulder, wondering if and how I am being watched, what secret terror watch list I’m on, and having no transparency or due process.” A commenter on Twitter noted that “The only thing Tulsi Gabbard blew up was Kamala’s earlier presidential run. That’s why she’s on a list.”

A former TSA agent explained that because of being listed on Quiet Skies Gabbard would have multiple air marshals on “every flight, every leg,” and canine teams will “maneuver over to the [boarding] gate area… floating around to try to pick up a scent of something… When she travels by air there is one or more sky marshals traveling with her. In some cases, she is met by a team of agents with sniffer dogs when she deplanes.” Tulsi believes that she might be targeted by the White House due to her antiwar position but she has also now endorsed Donald Trump for president and the government is therefore using law enforcement as its weapon to intimidate and discredit her.

Europe is also on board the death to free speech bandwagon. Another recent arrest is that of Pavel Durov in France on charges of permitting the use of his internet service to carry out illegal actions like collusion with organized crime, drug dealing, fraud and distribution of child pornography. He was temporarily released on a 5 million Euro bail on August 28^th but cannot leave France. Durov is the Russian-born founder of Telegram, the world’s largest encrypted messenger service with over one billion users. He is a multi-billionaire with a flamboyant lifestyle and also holds the citizenship of France and the United Arab Emirates. And there is inevitably an Israeli angle relating to Telegram’s airing of graphic videos of Israeli atrocities taking place in Gaza. The French prosecutors will no doubt say it is about allowing “hate speech,” but Durov’s has had French citizenship and has been traveling in and out of the country for years. The arrest, which can mean twenty years in prison, has only taken place after Israel complained. For what it’s worth the Chief Rabbi of France Haim Korsia has justified Israeli killing of Palestinians in Gaza during a French television interview and then urged the Israeli government to “finish the job”. He was not arrested for endorsing a war crime nor was he even rebuked by Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron.

Likewise, the United States’ moves to ban Chinese owned TikTok is in large part because it also allows videos from Gaza and Israel’s complaints have aroused a normally dormant US Congress to ban the site. It is all about creating an internet that does not harbor content that Jews dislike, and that rule also applies to individual journalists. On August 14^th British independent journalist Richard Medhurst was detained by police at London’s Heathrow Airport and questioned while in solitary confinement for 24 hours. He also had his phone and laptop confiscated over possible violation of section 12 of the UK’s Terrorism Act, which allows a person to be convicted and jailed for up to 14 years for what is a thought crime—“express[ing] an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed [terrorist] organization.” Medhurst was guilty only of being a regular and outspoken critic of Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinians. Also in the UK, on August 29^th, independent journalist Sarah Wilkinson had her home searched by 12 policemen from the counter-terrorism force who took her papers and electronic devices. They told her she was under arrest due to “content that she had posted online” that was highly critical of Israel genocide of the Gazans.

The moves against internet providers have no doubt alerted billionaire Elon Musk and others to the possibility that they might be under attack soon, in the case of Musk over his X (Twitter) site. Referring to Durov’s arrest, Musk has described the current attacks on information sites as “dangerous times.” Retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a Ukrainian Jew by birth, who made waves as a key witness supporting the impeachment of former President Donald Trump, issued a thinly veiled warning after Durov’s arrest, praising the move to require censorship on internet information sources. Vindman attributed the development to “… a growing intolerance for platforming disinfo & malign influence & a growing appetite for accountability. Musk should be nervous.”

Judge Andrew Napolitano, has also been a recent victim of a possible attempt to silence him and the war critics appearing on his interview program by having an internet platform that he has used for years temporarily suspended. YouTube claimed the move was due to misinformation that surfaced in a session with internationally respected journalist Pepe Escobar, who takes a decisively antiwar stance. But nothing in the interview suggests that there was anything worthy of censure as deliberate disinformation. In reality, Napolitano’s willingness to provide a platform for many experts whose views are unwelcome in mainstream media outlets has led more such individuals to join his roster of guests, which the Biden administration appears to see as a threat.

The media broadly speaking have been the principal targets of illegal government pushback, but the effort to permit only acceptable speech is also advancing in other areas. Schools and colleges are hurrying to create protest-proof campuses for the upcoming academic year, but that all too often has only meant ending demonstrations critical of Israel and its policies. Pro-Israel demonstrators who openly support the genocide against the Palestinians will not be disturbed. New York University has, for example, declared that students and faculty who discriminate against or harass “Zionists” may be violating New York University’s hate speech policies and could be suspended or expelled. Groups supportive of Israel believe that use of the very word “Zionist” in a derogatory fashion serves as a cover for attacks on Jews or Israelis. Now, NYU, which like many universities became paralyzed by pro-Palestinian unrest during the last school year, appears to be the first college to take a position on the term’s use. “Using code words, like ‘Zionist,’ does not eliminate the possibility that your speech violates the NDAH [Nondiscrimination and Anti-Harassment] Policy” reads NYU’s new student community standards. In other words, if you call someone a “Zionist” you are still likely to be an antisemite! The NYU chapter of Jewish on Campus explained how the new policy “makes it abundantly clear: Zionism is a core component of Jewish identity.” Pro-Palestinian groups on campus, objected, observing how the new code of conduct “criminalizes Palestine solidarity.”

In another move to “protect” vulnerable Zionist students from the alleged surging college antisemitism, Hillel Foundation, the Jewish student support group that is active on numerous American campuses, has launched a campaign called “Operation Secure Our Campuses” at more than 50 US universities. Meetings have been arranged to coordinate with local college administrators, police and FBI to come up with at least ten steps that should be taken to eliminate pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the upcoming academic year. Pro-Israel manifestations will apparently not be affected by the new regulations.

And there’s more, coming this time from the Republicans. Five Senators, Joni Ernst, Kevin Cramer, John Thune, Roger Marshall and Marsha Blackburn signed off on a letter to Daniel Werfe, commissioner of the IRS, about an “insufficient and insulting” response to an “inquiry to review the legal compliance of nonprofit charities that support demonstrations opposing the Jewish state.” Two groups the senators noted as involved with anti-Israel protests were Students for Justice in Palestine and Alliance for Global Justice. “An entity’s tax-exempt status is a privilege, and it is your responsibility to ensure only those who abide by tax laws are granted this privilege,” the senators wrote. The letter concluded with the lawmakers requesting information on the number of post- October 7^th organizations involved in pro-Palestinian protests and the identities of the groups that have actually lost their nonprofit status as a consequence. The senators are demanding that the IRS no longer offer special tax breaks to groups or organizations that are critical of Israel.

The fact is that IRS exemptions are usually granted after careful review of the credentials of organizations that fit into various definitions as being religious, educational, or charitable. One such status is called 501(c)(3) and it enables the organization to solicit donations that are in most cases tax deductible, a major incentive when seeking funding. Again, Jewish “charitable” foundations supporting the Israeli army, or the creation of illegal settlements, or even the genocide of Palestinians, will not be subjected to such scrutiny or loss of IRS special status. Groups critical of US foreign policy will, however, be increasingly targeted by the IRS and punished for staking out a political position that differs from that of the White House and Congress, particularly if it relates to Israel. It is just one more step in the death of free speech in America!

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

August 31, 2024 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | FBI, France, Human rights, Israel, NYU, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment