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Ending the Cold War at Home
A National Conference

American Civil Liberties Union, Washington, D.C.

"Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be
charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad."
    -- James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, May 13, 1798

Proceedings of
Ending the Cold War at Home:  A National Conference

Winter 1991, Washington Plaza Hotel, Washington, D.C.

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Steve Daitz and Christina Nicolosi for their invaluable
assistance in the preparation of this report.

Copies of this report, and the companion report, "Ending the Cold War at
Home: A Public Policy Report," are available for $5/copy or both for
$8.50. Prepaid orders should be sent to:

Publications Department
American Civil Liberties Union
122 Maryland Avenue, N.E.
Washington, D.C. 20002
[phone]

Copyright 1992 by the American Civil Liberties Union. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 0-86566 0581

Table of Contents

I.    Introduction

II.    Welcoming Address

III.    Special Conference Addresses

    Mary Frances Berry: The Bicentennial of the Bill of Rights and the
    End of the Cold War: Time to Dismantle the National Security State

    Konstanty Gebert: The Resurgence of Democratic Ideals Around the World

    Hon. Ronald V. Dellums: Achieving the Democratic Ideal

IV. The Domestic Legacy of the Cold War

    Morton H. Halperin: The Legacy of Cold War Restrictions on Civil
    Liberties

    Lillie Albertson: McCarthyite Persecution: A Personal Account

    Milton Schwebel: Comments on the Cold War and the Human Mind

    Gerald Horne: The Cold War's Impact on the African American Community

V. Unlocking the Doors to Government Information

    Page Putnam Miller: Secrecy and the Accurate Recording of History

    Roger Pilon: An Insider's Story

    Turna Lewis: The Impact of Secrecy on Federal Government Workers

    Tim Weiner: Exposing the Pentagon's Secret Budget

VI. A Constitutional National Defense

    Harold Koh: The War Powers Debate

    Michelle Benecke: Discrimination Against Women and Homosexuals in
    the Military

    Prexy Nesbitt: The Government's Secret Wars

    Rev. Bill Yolton: The Selective Service System

VII. Free Trade in ideas - An Idea Whose Time Has Come

    Choichiro Yatani: An Unexplained 44 Days of Detention

    John Terzano: Restrictions on Travel to Vietnam

    Bari Schwartz: Legislating the Free Flow of Information

VIII. Government Surveillance and Erosion of the Fourth Amendment

    Mark Lynch: Erosion of the Fourth Amendment

    Judith Krug: The FBI's "Library Awareness" Program

    Nkechi Taifa: The FBI'S Covert Operations Against the Black Movement

    Jinsoo Kim: The CISPES Investigation

IX. New Threats to Civil Liberties

    Gara LaMarche: Press Censorship

    Gregory Nojeim: Targeting of Arab-Americans

    Robert Borosage: From Cold War to "New World Order"

X. Looking Toward a Post-Cold War America

    Hodding Carter III: The Media in an Open Society

    Ron Daniels: Fighting for a Peace Dividend

    H. Jack Geiger: Cleaning up the Environment

XI. Building A Movement to End the Cold War at Home and Resist New Threats
to Liberty

    Steve Rickard: The Legislative Agenda

    Anne Braden: A Grassroots Approach

    Loretta Williams: The Need for Unity

Appendix A. Selected Bibliography

Appendix B. Glossary of Sponsoring Organizations
__________________________________________________
Ending the Cold War at Home:  Introduction

While the end of the Cold War abroad has opened new possibilities for U.S.
foreign and domestic policy, the national security state erected in its
name remains very much in place, hindering democratic decision-making and
infringing on our civil liberties.  Recognizing the need to eliminate Cold
War era laws and practices that impair constitutional rights, more than
sixty civil liberties, civil rights, professional, peace, labor, religious
and student organizations joined with the ACLU to sponsor a National
Conference on Ending the Cold War at Home.

The Conference was convened in February, 1991, bringing together over 250
participants to examine in depth the many restrictions that were imposed
in the name of national security which remain in effect. Participants
considered broad strategies -- including legislation, litigation and
public education -- for removing these restrictions and for resisting new
threats to liberty arising in the post-Cold War period.

The Conference was the first step in the development of an ongoing ACLU
Project on Ending the Cold War at Home. Other components include the
dissemination of a Public Policy Report, and work with a coalition of
groups that emerged from the Conference. This volume contains the
abbreviated text of the speeches and papers presented to the Conference.
__________________________________________________

Welcoming Address:  Norman Dorsen
Outgoing President, American Civil Liberties Union

This conference has a very simplistic message. The issues are familiar:
government secrecy, restrictions on travel, security clearances with
excessive requirements, government surveillance of civilians, covert
operations and more. There is the familiar litany, in other words, of
violations of civil liberties with varying degrees of intensity to which
we have grown, I am afraid, too accustomed over the many years of the Cold
War.

The purpose of this conference is to explore these issues on the, I hope,
not too optimistic assumptions that the Cold War is in fact over. We have
learned over the last eighteen months there seems to be no end of
surprises that the world has in store and I have no doubt there will be
further surprises.

So many of the issues we are talking about today are, most regrettably,
vestiges of the McCarthy era in American history. The government, while it
has learned some lessons, has not learned the right lesson -- to eliminate
these vestiges, to eliminate everything that stands in the way of a truly
free society.

As we meet, of course, there is the unexpected wild card of the Gulf War.
The ACLU, takes no position on the war itself, although we took a very
strong position on ensuring its constitutionality. We all know that civil
liberties suffer in cold war and they most assuredly suffer in hot wars
as well, with government management of news, restrictions on travel,
ethnic and racial targeting and a host of other civil liberties issues
with which we have just begun to grapple.

For so long we used to quote the supposition that if the Bill of Rights
were put to a vote of the American people it would not carry. In a sense
that should not be surprising, because the Bill of Rights is not a
majoritarian document. The whole point of the Bill of Rights is to
protect the dissenter and the minority. And yet it tugs at my heart that
so small a percentage of the American people recognize that they are not
receiving all of the news that they should be receiving, even during
wartime.
__________________________________________________

III: Special Conference Addresses
Keynote:  The Bicentennial of the Bill of Rights and the End of the Cold War
Dr. Mary Frances Berry

I 'm so pleased to see so many of you here today. When I told one of my
colleagues who serves with me on the Civil Rights Commission -- who is not
of the same political persuasion that I am -- that I would be late to a
meeting today because I had to speak at this conference, he said, "Well,
that's ridiculous! Why should you people be doing that when we're in the
midst of a war? Why don't you have a conference to rally around the flag,
support the troops in the Gulf and to say that right now you ought to be
tightening restrictions on freedom of expression rather than on national
security." So I guess from his perspective it is a matter of great courage
for anybody to show up at a conference like this and have the temerity to
speak at it.

I believe that while some think this is the worst of times to be
discussing these issues, it is probably the best of times, which is what I
told him. In addition, as I reminded him and I am sure all of you are
aware, most of us here are accustomed to being embattled. That's nothing
new.

I think there are two things that ought to come out of this conference.
One is to determine how we end the restrictions on freedom of expression
and the steps that can be taken to do that. There's another one, which is
to figure out how to gird our loins, so to speak, for the struggle that is
ongoing and will intensify as the war goes on -- to confine people who
want to express their point of view. That is an urgent crisis.

We have a war which I, as an historian, think about in terms of something
Barbara Tuckman said in the March of Folly, which is that "old men will
continue to make decisions to go to war in which young men and women will
be killed" and that we should remember that our enemy yesterday is our
friend today and the enemy today that we must pull out all the stops to
defeat, tomorrow will be the country that we will be trying to support and
make strong for some geopolitical reasons. But I, as an historian, know
something else, which is that the only thing we learn from history is that
some people refuse to learn anything from history.

***

Ironically, as we come together to discuss how to end the Cold War at
home, we find ourselves in the midst of a "hot war" abroad. As hostilities
escalate on both fronts, it is easy to forget that this time last year we
were breathing a sigh of relief at the end of the Cold War, one of the
most traumatic periods in our nation's history. It is also easy to forget
that a few short months ago people were talking about the dream of a
"peace dividend." They asked me to be on a public television show to
discuss the peace dividend. I said to them that they wouldn't want me to
come because I'll explain how we won't have one. We are also in the midst
of celebrating the Bicentennial of the Bill of Rights this year.

***

This is a harrowing moment in history. But it didn't start on August 2,
1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait. It did not begin on November 8, 1990 when
President Bush unilaterally changed the mission of U.S. forces deployed in
Saudi Arabia to an offensive one, nor on January 16, 1991 when that
offensive began. The shaping of this moment in history has been in the
making for nearly fifty years, which is the 'why' of this conference.

For nearly fifty years we accepted many dubious practices as necessary to
deal with this enemy that Ronald Reagan later called the "evil empire."
These practices have become bad habits that create excessive behavior in
wartime and unacceptable behavior in times of peace. Bad habits that are
manifesting themselves in this hot war, and if we don't start breaking
them, will continue to undermine our democracy long after Saddam Hussein
is just a dim memory. For nearly fifty years we waged an 'ideological' war
which was at the core of every foreign policy decision and many domestic
decisions as well. For nearly fifty years we demonized the enemy until it
became the evil empire. This demonization of the enemy, which has
historical antecedents, was easily adapted to a new enemy in the persona
of Saddam Hussein.

For nearly fifty years the fabric of the Cold War has been deeply
entrenched in our national life, woven through all of our institutions,
distorting the democratic process and defining the limits of political
discourse. Using claims of national security as an incantation to
overwhelm all reason and opposition, the executive branch concentrated
awesome political power in its hands. What has happened is a dramatic tilt
in the constitutional balance of power.

We are here today in this hot war because the Cold War has not ended at
home and its domestic effects are being exacerbated. One concern is
presidential power to engage the nation in offensive military action
without the prior approval of Congress, which has become commonplace. One
can see when the president began to commit troops to Saudi Arabia, that
the results were almost a foregone conclusion as the steps were taken one
by one. If you follow the path of the decision, you will see that before a
single vote was cast in Congress, the debate was framed as one of "support
for our troops in the desert." And what answer can anyone give after that
commitment has been made.

A second concern that troubles me deeply as an historian is
institutionalized secrecy. It even goes so far as presidents deciding to
conceal information from Americans until after elections, as Mr. Bush did
about his decision to commit us unilaterally to this war. Because, in the
name of national security, Congress has allowed the President to take the
nation to war secretly, through covert paramilitary operations in Asia,
Africa, and Latin America, we have found ourselves involved in a series of
hot wars as regional conflicts heat up.

Because, in the name of national Security, the FBI and other intelligence
agencies controlled by the executive branch have amassed tremendous
extra-constitutional powers, the FBI felt it could, with impunity, target
Arab-Americans for questioning and surveillance. Because in the name of
national security, protesters against US. policy in Central America,
Southern Africa and the Middle East have been systematically harassed,
spied upon and subjected to secret counterintelligence investigations,
including warrantless searches of their homes and offices, people who
oppose the Gulf War ought to be prepared to have the same thing happen to
them. War, by definition, expunges human life. War is also the greatest
threat to civil liberties.

Another thing that concerns me very greatly is the government taking
actions to preempt popular opposition to this war through censorship of
the press. Pentagon censorship is keeping the American people from knowing
the real nature of the war that is being fought in their name. Also
concerns about the targeting of Arab-Americans by the FBI could have the
effect of intimidating and silencing many potential critics of
Administration policy.

We also know that civil liberties of Americans serving in the Gulf have
been infringed. The military is administering experimental drugs to
soldiers without their informed consent. The government has been extending
the term of service of volunteers and reservists without their approval.
Service persons are discouraged from participation in religious
activities. Also, mail to and from Saudi Arabia is censored. And when the
shooting stops, U.S. citizens could still be prohibited from traveling to
Iraq if the economic embargo remains in place, and Iraqis could still be
refused visas on "foreign policy" grounds to deliver speeches here in the
U.S. to tell us about their views.

First Amendment freedoms in this country were a major casualty of the
ideological war against communism. It follows that among the first victims
of "Operation Desert Storm" have been the guardians of the First
Amendment. Under the Pentagon's rules for press coverage we have combat
"pools" that go out with the units in battle and then have to submit their
reports to the authorities before they're transmitted.

***

It is precisely in times of national crisis such as war that the freedom
of the press and the public's right to know is most critical. Despite the
massive volume of coverage, if you try to keep track of content, you will
find there is very little. We have no sense of the human toll of the
attack on Iraq. We're not sure how many people were killed or injured in
Saudi Arabia or Israel. Press restrictions enable the White House and the
Pentagon to manage the public's perception of the war. We are receiving a
government-shielded version of the hostilities: what we see is a
triumphant, high-tech war fought on bloodless battlefields. From military
and government spokespersons we receive confusing and contradictory
reports that frequently conflict with statements that we were assured
were true only the day before.

The reason for restricting the press seems alarmingly obvious: fear that
reports and pictures of combat in a desert war would have an adverse
impact on public opinion. Hiding behind "security" concerns, the
government seeks to minimize the political price of sending American
troops into combat, and to protect the military from criticism and
embarrassment. As a result, the haunting and unforgettable images of
battle will be deceptively blurred.

There were no such restrictions on the press in place during the entire
Vietnam war. One of the things I did in my life was to be a reporter in
Vietnam one summer. I was at Michigan and was in the anti-war movement and
I decided to go see for myself. So I got accredited as a reporter by a
bunch of newspapers and I went to Vietnam and traveled all over the
country. I know how much we laughed in Saigon when the "Five o'clock
Follies" came out every day from the Defense Department to give us a
briefing about what had been going on that day. And we laughed because
there was always some reporter in the room who had just come from wherever
that was and who knew that what they were saying was not the truth.

The modern-day precedent for censorship was set by the Reagan
Administration's handling of the media during the 1983 invasion of
Grenada. The invasion was documented by Army reporters and military
cameramen completely, and the civilian press was kept out.  Following in
the footsteps of his predecessor, Bush portrayed the 1989 invasion of
Panama as a flawless, nearly bloodless conflict. Not a single photograph,
strip of film or eyewitness account was published about the actual combat.
More than a year later , we still don't know the cost of "Operation Just
Cause" in Panamanian lives. I guess we're not even supposed to care. As
for "Operation Desert Storm," it has been decided that there will be no
solemn arrival ceremonies -- and no press coverage -- for people who are
killed in action. A military spokesman defended this decision by saying,
"There would be too many ceremonies," and therefore they don't want anyone
to cover them.

Another concern is these interviews of Arab-Americans which are a shameful
and ominous aspect of the Administration's war on civil liberties. If one
watches all the things they are doing with Arab-Americans it increases the
likelihood of people stereotyping Arab-Americans and there have been acts
and threats of violence which have multiplied exponentially since the
beginning of this crisis.

***

When we examine the FBI's explanation for why it is doing all this it says
they're trying to protect them from possible violations of their civil
rights. Those of us who have been around a while think about another
haunting specter, the post-war experience of African American activists,
whose protection was also within the FBI's jurisdiction. We also think
about the civil rights movement and the people who were involved there and
what happened to them.

For, when Viola Liuzzo was gunned down in Alabama while on a Freedom Ride
in March 1965, one of the men in the car brandishing a gun was an FBI
informant. When William Bergman was beaten and crippled four years
earlier, the FBI furnished the information that made the attack possible
and stood by, knowing that the local police had made a deal with the Klan
giving them fifteen minutes to attack. When Martin Luther King made his "I
Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 the FBI was there,
not to protect him, but to assess the danger he posed to "the established
political and social order." The next day J. Edgar Hoover convened what
can only be described as a council of war to discuss how to deal with what
the Bureau called the demagoguery of Dr. King.

By then the FBI had been at war with the civil rights movement for several
years. Its objective, spelled out most clearly in the memorandum
establishing the special Counterintelligence Program dubbed "COINTELPRO -
Black Nationalist," was to "prevent the cohesion and growth of the
African-American movement, to keep it from gaining respectability, and to
prevent the rise of a Black Messiah," someone who could unify, electrify
and lead the movement.

The most intense operations were directed against groups like the Black
Panther Party, SNCC, CORE, the Nation of Islam, the National Welfare
Rights Organization, the League of Black Revolutionary Workers, the
Republic of New Africa, Black student unions, the Dodge Revolutionary
Union Movement and many local Black churches and communist organizations
struggling for decent living conditions, justice, equality and empowerment
-- all in the name of national security and the fight against communism.

As is true in so many other contexts during the Cold War era,
anticommunist ideology was so pervasive that it set the terms of debate on
all sides of the civil rights issue. On the one hand, people who opposed
desegregation defamed civil rights advocates by calling them "subversive"
and "red" and "pinkos" and worse. Many of the measures used against
Communists, such as the Internal Security Act, were adopted on the state
level in the South to use against Blacks. On the other hand, while
constitutional rights were being trampled upon by all three branches of
the federal government in the name of fighting communism, the U.S.
Attorney General filed a pro-civil rights brief in Brown v. Board of
Education. This is anomalous unless you understand it was filed by the
Truman Administration in this case because of the view that "it is in the
context of the present world struggle between freedom and tyranny that the
problem of racial discrimination must be viewed."

While the global situation we face -- the hot war in the Gulf and the
Soviet crackdown in the Baltics -- may appear to be a major obstacle to
our call to end the Cold War at home, it still may be possible to move
forward. A month ago, for the first time in half a century, the President
sought Congress's express authorization to go to war. That's the glimmer
of hope.

While asking Congress to vote was clearly politically expedient for Bush,
a not irrelevant consideration was the fact that, while he was proclaiming
to the world the prerogative of the United States to defend international
law, he was disregarding our own Constitution. So that vote, whatever
one's view of the outcome may be, marks our first victory in ending the
Cold War mentality at home. Maybe it will be more difficult in the future
for presidents to credibly assert unilateral war making authority.

President Bush has said that the goal of his Gulf policy is to put in
place a "new world order." I think he picks these terms indiscriminately
without any awareness of context. He never learned what Howard Thurmond,
the distinguished Black theologian, said in his time: "Text without
context is mere pretext." Bush doesn't put anything in context. But his
new world order, and its "kinder, gentler" domestic counterpart, bear
striking resemblance to the old Cold War modalities.

If we are to realize the goal of the drafters of the Bill of Rights -- to
protect individual liberty against governmental tyranny -- then we must
end the Cold War at home. We must dismantle the national security state,
and we must renew our demand for a peace dividend because it is moral and
it is just.

It is precisely at crucial moments like this that our work is most
desperately needed. There is never a wrong time to fight for the Bill of
Rights.
______________________________
Mary Frances Berry is a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She
is a founder of the Free South Africa Movement and a Professor of American
Social Thought and History at the University of Pennsylvania.
____________________________________________________________

III: Special Conference Addresses
The Resurgence of Democratic Ideals Around the World
Konstanty Gebert

The title of my address strikes me as possibly over-optimistic. At least
twice over the last 45 years, we have witnessed global transformations
which were then interpreted as proof of the "resurgence of democratic
ideals," but which later disappointed those who had invested their hopes
in them.

***

This time, however, the prospects for a resurgence of democratic ideals
seem so much brighter. For the first time national self-determination,
social change and democratic development seem to be in harmony, and
mutually supportive.... The end of the Cold War has instilled hope in
those who struggle to expand democracy and deepen social change in their
own countries.

***

Power politics was not an invention of the Cold War, but preceded it and
has survived it. The international environment is more supportive of
democracy than before, but certainly this does not mean that the future of
democracy is assured.

Democracy itself is a risky proposition.... It is about means, not ends.
It is a good method for avoiding certain undesirable outcomes, but does
not promise much in the way of a better future. The appeal it has for
long-oppressed populations has more to do with their rejection of
oppression than with their endorsement of democracy as such.

I would like to expound on that, drawing on the Polish experience. Over
the last five decades, the immense majority of Poles have been deprived of
basic civil and sometimes even human rights.... Not until 1989 did Poland
concede basic rights to its citizens.

Solidarity emerged as the victor of a long struggle, fought under the
banner of democracy. Democracy was simply understood as the rule of the
majority; as long as the vast majority of Poles rejected Communism and
supported Solidarity, this caused no theoretical or practical problems.
But Solidarity's unity was intimately connected with the existence of the
Communist enemy. With the enemy gone, unity disappeared, and the question
arose: Who speaks for the majority of the Polish people?

The simple democratic answer is [to] hold an election and find out. The
results are inconclusive, and worrying. In the semi-free parliamentary
elections of 1989, Solidarity won an astounding victory, taking all but
one of the parliamentary seats it could stand for under the restrictive
law. But the election was more of a plebiscite: it was about what the
country did not want -- Communism -- and not about what it wanted.... More
important still, forty percent of eligible voters did not bother to go to
the polls.

***

In the absence of a clear-cut electoral majority other spokesmen claim to
speak in the name of the Polish people. The Catholic church is one. It
represents the major element of continuity in Poland's tormented
history.... It grants itself a right to intervene in all aspects of
national life in order to keep them consistent with its teachings.

***

The effects are there for all to see: a law banning abortion has been
passed by the Senate; religion has been reintroduced to the schools; there
is talk of banning divorce.

President Walesa presents himself as the embodiment of Solidarity's
struggle, and of Poland's age-long struggle for independence. He has
embarked on a course of political changes, which are as sweeping as they
are unconstitutional.

Democracy in Poland is in even deeper trouble than these remarks would
imply.... When democracy became political practice, the passion it
inspired was gone, and people started turning to other ideologies....
Nationalism and religious fundamentalism are two such ideologies.

I believe some of my remarks can be applied to countries other than
Poland.... And to avoid dampening the enthusiasm we feel as we observe
entire nations moving to democracy, we must also be aware that though the
odds are better than before, the stakes are just as high.
______________________________
Konstanty Gebert is a political columnist and contributor to several
Polish newspapers and magazines. He was one of the most important voices
in the underground press after martial law was declared in Poland in 1981,
writing under the pen name of David Warszawsla.
__________________________________________________

III: Special Conference Addresses
Achieving the Democratic Ideal
The Honorable Ronald V. Dellums

I want to speak against the backdrop of the Persian Gulf War which, in my
opinion, is the latest manifestation of the national security state and an
extraordinary threat to the achievement of democratic ideals in our
society.

I came to Congress against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, the
Vietnam War, the struggle for the liberation of women, the struggle for
the preservation of the environment, the struggle for the protection of
consumers and workers. And my constituency sent me here having made a
solemn contract to walk on the floor of the United States Congress, and in
the context of that institution, struggle as diligently as I could for
peace and for a just society -- economic and human justice.

The first two years I served on the Foreign Affairs Committee because that
was the only opening I could obtain. I'm a social worker by training. I
really, in one sense, came to Congress to write new programs to address
the problems of human misery because many of us in the Black community
wanted to go forward to challenge and to change policy so we could reach
back to our communities and help our fellow sisters and brothers. So I
really came to write new policies to eradicate poverty, hunger, disease,
homelessness, hopelessness, unemployment, the myriad of human problems
that confront people and force them to experience great human misery.

I got up on the floor many times trying to raise my voice as strongly and
effectively as I could for peace and for radically altering the nature of
American priorities. But on numerous occasions my colleagues would come up
to me after I had finished speaking and would say I spoke eloquently to
the priorities and the human condition, but you are extremely naive about
the dangers of the world. You are extremely naive about the communist
menace, the domino effect. Yes, we do want to solve the problems of people
in this country but these problems pale in the wake of the threat of the
Soviet Union, the threat of communism over-running the planet. We have to
get on with that business before we can deal with the priority issues that
you so powerfully raise.

Then when I was re-elected in January 1973, I now had two years seniority.
I now had the opportunity to seek other assignments. I thought about a
principle I had learned in graduate school in social work-- you start
where people are, not where they ought to be. This country is not going to
address these problems until we deal with the notion of the national
security state, until we deal with the notions of the Cold War that has
masqueraded as American foreign policy for over forty years. After some
serious deliberation I sought membership on the House Arms Services
Committee. But I didn't come to Congress to get in bed with MX missiles
and Trident submarines and cruise missiles and B2 bombers. I came to do
something very different but I realized I could never get back to that
until I challenged them where they were. So I decided that I would never
let any other member of Congress define me as naive about the world, naive
about the needs of our military, so I went on the Arms Services Committee
to learn Pentagonese and missile capability and strategy. To be as
competent as possible in these arenas, to challenge them in the citadel of
militarism. So I went on the Arms Services Committee to raise my voice in
the name of peace, to try to challenge increasing military budgets,
greater militarization of America and re directing the human priorities of
this country.

For eighteen of the twenty years I have been in Congress I have been
marching up that hill. In 1971 only a handful of members of Congress were
willing to stand in opposition to the Vietnam War. Public opinion had not
arrived at being in opposition to the war in Vietnam so debate in the
Congress was virtually silenced. But some of us continued to raise our
voices, in concert with other people who were the dissenters and the
protesters and the educators. We struggled and we educated America to the
point where we affected public opinion, and public opinion, in turn,
forced the Congress of the United States to end the war in Vietnam by
ending its funding base.

We started to march forward. But then came Ronald Reagan with massive and
rapid expansion of our military budget. In 1971 the military budget was 79
billion dollars against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. When Ronald
Reagan left office we were spending in the neighborhood of 300 billion
dollars a year on the military budget. We saw a nation move from the
policy of nuclear deterrence to nuclear war-fighting capability where we
embraced the ultimate oxymoron -- winning a nuclear war. We see draconian
cuts in social programs, massive step-back from a commitment to address
the human misery of our fellow human beings.

***

Then last year the most incredible thing [happened]. We started to win.
The Berlin wall came crumbling down. Eastern Europeans and Western
Europeans started to marry each other. Unification. We had an invasion of
Eastern Europeans into Western Europe not to wage war, but to shop. For a
moment all of us said we finally lived long enough. We see the Cold War
crumbling. We saw Margaret Thatcher, no left-wing extremist by any stretch
of the imagination, saying that the Cold War was over. We started to quote
her. The chair of the Armed Services Committee accepted the Dellums
Amendment to kill the B2 bomber, my heart swelled. Tears came to my eyes.
We were about to win. And maybe after a while I can get back to why I
really came to the Congress. Because if the truth be known we are on the
verge of losing an entire generation of our young people, killing and
dying in the streets of America.

So there's a great ray of hope. But then Saddam Hussein crossed the
borders into Kuwait. President Bush discovers Saddam Hussein in a very
different way. A year ago not one of you in this room would have accepted
a bet that we would be at war. We were drunk with the idealism that
finally our perspective was beginning to win, that the reality of the Cold
War was crumbling. President Bush put American troops into Saudi Arabia,
garnered a coalition ostensibly stopping the aggression beyond that point.
a early all of us have a responsibility to raise our voices in opposition
to the aggression because any sane and rational human being must challenge
force and violence and aggression as a way of solving problems. Then
President Bush took it to the next step. He escalated the troops. I knew
then that we were going to war, that our nation was engaging in what I
perceive to be the immoral strategy of brinksmanship -- threatening war as
a way of achieving peace. A high-stakes gamble because if you lose,
hundreds of thousands of people are placed in harm's way.

On October 9, after sitting down and writing what I would like to think
was a very articulate letter to the President, 31 members of Congress
joined me in sending that letter to the President. In that letter we
raised concern about this escalation of troops, about using brinkmanship
as a tool of foreign policy, about moving from a defend-and-deter posture
to offensive military options. We said that we should rely more heavily on
sanctions, engage in greater aggressive diplomacy, that we ought to use
international institutions such as the International Court of Justice and
the United Nations as a way of attempting to solve these problems without
force and violence and without war. And we said to the President that our
reading of the Constitution said that you do not have the power to take us
to war. I didn't receive an answer from the President until November 6.
The letter read, in part: "sanctions are working effectively." I called
together a meeting of concerned members of Congress and reached out to
members to talk about where we were and what our response should be to it.
And I remember in the room I referred to myself as a peace activist and I
started to give my thumping speech about peace and our responsibility to
challenge this madness. One of my colleagues' original response was to
recoil from that comment.

At that moment I had to mature very quickly because it wasn't about Ron
Dellums taking a posture, it wasn't about the handful of us who had the
courage or the tenacity or the freedom to stand up and speak out without
compromise, but it was whether we had the capacity to pull together a
coalition strong enough to actually to stop this war. Using social work
skills I appointed all of the dissenters in the room and the people who
had questions as drafters of the statement that the coalition could rally
around. Later that evening they came back with an extraordinary statement.
I knew that I could sign whatever they wrote but I wasn't sure some people
could sign whatever I wrote. These folks wrote that they opposed the
offensive use of force in the Persian Gulf, we question this incredible
build-up, we think sanctions ought to work, we think greater diplomacy
ought to be used, and finally we say unequivocally that if you choose to
use force you must come to us under Article I, Section 8 of the
Constitution. Eighty-two people signed that letter in the waning days of
the Congress. We simply ran out of time. We asked for an emergency meeting
with the Speaker, which we were granted. We gave the Speaker that
statement and wanted him to present it to the President of the United
States and let the President know that there is a concerned and
considerable voice in the Congress (a) in opposition to war in the Persian
Gulf, (b) in support of economic sanctions and diplomatic efforts, and (c)
who state resolutely that the President does not have the power alone to
take us to war. Then the Congress adjourned and we went our various ways.

***

One day my special assistant called me and delivered a message from one of
my significant others in the Congress that it was his considered opinion
that he thought this Administration was marching to war. I told him to get
in touch with the Center for Constitutional Rights. I said I'm not a
lawyer but have them look at the question of whether or not I would have
standing, either alone or with a group of my colleagues, to file for
declarative relief and injunctive relief on the other hand to stop the
President from going to war on the grounds that to do so would violate my
rights and prerogatives as a member of Congress under Article I, Section 8
of the Constitution. And to my pleasant surprise the lawyers came back and
said this was a fantastic case. That most of the time we are litigating
after the fact and this was now before the fact.

Let me tell you what my strategy was. One, I wanted to throw a
monkey-wrench into the process because millions of American people were
being marched down the path to think that war was inevitable. Two, to
focus the American people's attention on the reality that this is a
constitutional form of government because if we could demand rigid
adherence to the Constitution with respect to the declaration of war and
that the decision would come to the Congress of the United States, the
Congress would weigh the mail, count the phone calls, send out
questionnaires, spend money polling public opinion every day. I felt alone
we could not stop the President from going to war because in many ways the
President is insulated from public opinion, but I knew that the Congress
was not. I knew that if we could ever force the President to have to ask
and that the Congress would debate the question, the probability of
victory would increase at a tremendous level.

The judge, while he didn't give us injunctive relief, did say (a) the
court was not prepared to read out of the Constitution Article I, Section
8, (b) that the Congress alone had the right to declare war, (c) that for
the U.S. to attack offensively would, in his estimation, be a definition
of war under the Constitution. He didn't give us the injunctive relief
because at that moment the court didn't see what I saw: the imminent
nature of this war, but he did underscore our position. Then he went
further to say that while the Congress has the power as a practical
matter, sometimes the Congress sidesteps its constitutional
responsibility, for politically-sensitive or expedient reasons chooses not
to implement its constitutional prerogatives. He thought that while the 54
of us were significant, that we did not comprise the majority of the
Congress. So that if the majority of Congress joined me in the lawsuit, or
passed a resolution saying we want to exercise that prerogative of
deciding for or against the use of force, that would signal to the court
that the Congress in this instance was prepared to deal with it.

On that level I want to say to you that we won. We forced the President to
ask for the authority to use force and we forced the Congress to debate
the issue. Then I was hoping on America because I want to come to a very
painful point. We missed an incredible moment. Because our strategy worked
to that point. We didn't educate and mobilize quickly or effectively
enough, maybe because many of us thought that going to war with Iraq was
so crazy. For whatever reason, we didn't quite get the young people
mobilized quickly enough. On the vote on exercising constitutional
prerogatives, we are now on record saying we reserve unto ourselves the
constitutional prerogatives. The President presented his request for the
right to use force. We lost 250 183. A 67 vote difference. Thirty-four
votes the other way and the Congress of the United States would have gone
on record opposing the use of force. If you look at history, we came
close. We lost an important moment. What my lawsuit was designed to try to
do was to say to you: get mobilized quickly. I believe we will look back
at this moment and realize we lost an incredible opportunity. I believe
the consequences of this war are so ominous and so far-reaching. We were
trying to say to America that it's easier to stop a war before it starts
than after it starts. Here we are on the verge of a land war that has the
capacity to kill at a level that would stagger the imagination.

I continue to believe that there is an alternative to killing and dying as
a way of solving international disputes so I mounted the podium during
that debate and challenged war. I said to the Congress to be neither fool
nor knave. The decision we're about to make is tantamount to a declaration
of war. Each member ought to vote on the basis of his or her conscience.
The test of conscience is the greatest test because it asks the most
fundamental question: what is right.

In the aftermath of this war what will they seek? Smarter bombs? More of
them at the expense of resources that we desperately need to address the
human misery of our people? Even though public opinion is not with us at
this moment and even though the point of view that I articulated is in the
minority, we have a political and moral imperative to continue to raise
our voices to stop this war. Every day that it goes forward the potential
devastation increases and the near-term and long-term implications expand.
We must now begin the painful effort to educate American people. It will
be more difficult now than it was before the war started. Now you have
this "who are these unpatriotic people dissenting. These people in the
streets don't represent the majority." Well who ever said you have to be
in the majority in order to dissent? Protest and demonstration and dissent
is an integral part of American life and we must demand the right to
continue to do that. How can you applaud the Chinese who put their lives
on the line in Tiananmen square? How can you applaud the people in Eastern
Europe who brought down the Berlin Wall by the sheer power of their
numbers and their desire to gain control of their own destiny, and then
suddenly turn to our own people and say 'You cannot dissent." There's
something fundamentally contradictory in that. We must educate our
community about the havoc and the death and destruction. We use
euphemisms. Rather than killing we call it "collateral damage."

American people need to know that war at its basis is suffering and dying
and killing and stench and bleeding and breaking. We must say to America
that censorship denies you as a people in a democratic society the right
to know what you need to know to make rational and intelligent decisions.

Our job will be more difficult, sisters and brothers. But we have no other
alternative but to stand out there, to continue to raise our voices, to
continue not only to talk about peace in the Persian Gulf but to withdraw
from the mentality of war. We now have the opportunity to look at the
future right now. We are seeing modern warfare and we have to educate
American people not to become enamored of the technology but to be
frightened of it. We have to take the world to a better place.

Here's our chance to say there's a better way. To say that solving the
problems through peace and diplomacy and international cooperation and
international institutions is the way to go and that high-tech weaponry
will not be our salvation but our demise, and that big military budgets
will not be our salvation but our demise.

Do not construe my remarks to mean that we should not continue to remain
resolute, optimistic and idealistic. We can still bring change.
______________________________
The Honorable Ron Dellums represents California's 8th Congressional
District in the House of Representatives. Dellums was the principal
plaintiff in the lawsuit to enforce the constitutional mandate granting
Congress the authority to declare war.
__________________________________________________

IV:  The Domestic Legacy of the Cold War
The Legacy of Cold War Restrictions on Civil Liberties
Morton H. Halperin

The one way it is clear the Cold War is over is that the Soviet threat and
the view of the international communist conspiracy has receded. It is
difficult now to argue that we face the same threat that was used to
justify previous restrictions.

Congressional hearings and reports during the Cold War led Americans to
believe we were surrounded by an international communist movement which
threatened the very survival of our nation.

Some of the worst restrictions were removed as the McCarthy era ended but
some are being used in the Gulf War, which clearly illustrates the danger
of allowing such restrictions to remain in effect.

The FBI has vastly stepped up its program of surveillance targeted at
Arab-Americans [who] engage in lawful political activity, because the
Bureau assumes, as it previously assumed with the civil rights and
anti-war movements, that anyone who engages in lawful political activity
will "so quickly become frustrated that they will turn to illegal and
terrorist activity."

This program includes Fourth Amendment rights violations in the form of
wiretaps, illegal searches, and harassment of people in the Arab-American
community. Such FBI power is based not on legislation but on Attorney
General guidelines which authorize the Bureau to engage in domestic
security investigations and foreign counter-intelligence investigations.

What are needed, as has been clear in reports of the House and Senate
Intelligence Committees, are guidelines enacted by Congress. These
guidelines need to be public and need to be based on two basic principles:
(1) the government only investigates criminal activity, and (2) the
government may not investigate or collect information about lawful
political activity. These principles certainly are not in the operational
procedures and activities of intelligence agencies.

Another area is the war powers question. Forcing the Congress to vote --
which is literally what happened in the Gulf because of public outcry --
was a relatively small victory because that vote came late in the process.
The Constitution requires that security commitments be made by Congress
either through legislation or treaties. Neither were done.

The President dispatched troops to the Middle East to defend a country
with which we had no treaty, without consulting the Congress and without
public debate. We have come so far that the initial deployment of troops
to the Persian Gulf elicited no concern that the President was violating
constitutional powers.

We have the legacy of covert operations. I believe that behind every
international crisis of the Cold War period was a triggering event of a
covert operation. If you go back to events that led first to the Iran-Iraq
war and then to the current crisis, you will find some covert operations
we know about and others we do not know about which we will later learn
played a critical role, as it did in the Korean War and a number of other
episodes.

We have let the environment be corrupted by national security claims. For
years nuclear weapons production facilities were exempt from environmental
protection laws and the Supreme Court upheld a general exemption from
environmental protection laws when the government mumbled "national
security."

Congress authorized the President to waive environmental laws when
"necessary for national security." The Pentagon has been given the
authority to avoid normal requirements of environmental impact statements.

The way the Supreme Court has dealt with this issue is but one
manifestation of a very serious deterioration of the Court's willingness
to take on the executive branch when it invokes claims of national
security. There has come to be a tradition in the judicial branch that
when the nation is at war, courts will defer.

Finally, there is pervasive secrecy and acceptance of prior restraints in
the press and acceptance of the closing of a base where bodies return,
along with an acceptance that the government can tell us which reporters
can cover the war.

All this makes it dear that the legacy of the Cold War restrictions are
having an important effect on the way the public can learn about, and
dissent from, the current policies in the Persian Gulf.

There are two tasks which we have: (1) fight those restrictions now, and
(2) come away with a determination that we will remove the legacy of the
Cold War and the way that it has poisoned the political and constitutional
processes of this country.
______________________________
Morton H. Halperin is Director of the Washington Office of the ACLU and
the Center for National Security Studies. He was a senior member of the
National Security Council staff in 1969.
__________________________________________________

IV: The Domestic Legacy of the Cold War
McCarthyite Persecution: A Personal Account
Lillie Albertson

The history of any struggle is made up of numerous small stories. Mine is
just one of many.

My husband, William Albertson and I were members of the United States
Communist Party. I joined the Party in 1948. Bill had been a leading
figure and functionary in the Party for many years. He had joined the
Party in 1927 as a student at the University of Pittsburgh.

Because we had chosen to join a left wing movement committed to socialism,
our family and friends were constantly harassed, persecuted and prosecuted
by the United States government. We broke no laws except the unwritten
rule against advocating for socialism.

Our telephones were tapped for years. Bill and I were followed. FBI agents
would approach us, our co-workers and bosses, telling them that they had
"Reds working for them." Not surprisingly, we would be let go with no
explanation.

My role in the party was relatively unimportant. Bill, on the other hand,
was on the national committee. This singled him out for special attention
by the FBI. My husband was hounded constantly.

In 1953 he was prosecuted under the Smith Act on a warrant issued from
Pittsburgh and was one of the "Pittsburgh 6" Smith Act victims. Bill was
sentenced to 60 days in jail for contempt of court during the trial, for
refusing to name others present at a meeting. He told the court: "My wife
and I have tried to raise our children in the best traditions of the
American labor movement. We have given them a hatred for spies, stool
pigeons and scabs. I could not look my children in the face if I violated
those traditions." My husband's words were ironic in their prophesy.

Bill was convicted, along with four other defendants, on the Smith Act
charges of conspiring to teach and advocate the violent overthrow of the
government. The convictions, based on the testimony of seven FBI
informers, were later reversed by the Supreme Court when the government
admitted that its key witness lied under oath. The witness wasn't
prosecuted for perjury and the government chose not to retry the case.
Essentially it took four years, sixty days in jail for Bill, and who knows
how many tax payer dollars for the government to admit that the charges
against my husband and the others were falsehoods they created.

In 1962, Bill was hauled before the Subversive Activities Control Board by
then Attorney General, Robert Kennedy. This was the first step in a
proceeding under the McCarran Act requiring Bill to register as a member
of the Communist Party.

Since Bill had broken no laws, the government turned to harassment instead
of indictment. This was a deliberate and secret attempt to silence us. You
can fight charges in a court of law, but how does one fight a secret army
who uses harassment, slander, rumors and forgery as their weapons of
choice?

Finally, one June evening in 1964, it all came to a head. Three men from
the party came to our home. They were co-workers, friends, comrades of
Bill's. They took my husband for a walk. They would not speak in the
house. Upon their return I could see something was terribly wrong. My
husband was not the same man that had walked out with them earlier.

They stated they had positive evidence that Bill was an informant for the
FBI. They showed me a note, claiming it was Bill's handwriting. It had
been found in a car in which Bill had been a passenger a few days earlier.
Although the writing was similar, I knew it was not Bill's. I had known
Bill for 15 years, but I could never read his writing. Whoever wrote this
letter had taken great pains to make sure it was legible.

The note was addressed "Dear Joe," and appeared to be an informer's report
to his FBI contact. It was signed "Bill." They insisted this note proved
Bill was guilty and that I must take our child and abandon him. Knowing
the character of my husband, I knew these accusations were false. Bill
would sooner die than inform on others.

Bill, his 80 year old mother and I were expelled from the party. Bill was
publicly identified-Informer, Stool Pigeon, Police Agent-in the world
press.

We were spat upon, threatened and assaulted by our former friends and
associates. Bill was fired from his job. Our child was also threatened.
Our home was burned. Friends would have nothing to do with us, for fear of
guilt by association.

We were totally alone...isolated. The emotional effect this had on our
family was catastrophic. Bill researched, wrote, pleaded and appealed to
the party--doing everything humanly possible to vindicate himself and be
reinstated. One of the most painful experiences of my life was watching a
destroyed man try to save himself - especially when I knew that the truth
may never be known in our lifetime.

My husband was crushed. He grew more and more despondent. I was afraid to
leave him alone. His life had been taken from him. Even his mother said,
"It would have been better if they had killed you, like in the old
country." Devastated, he agreed. However, he was alive and the only thing
to do was fight to clear himself of the most despicable charge that can be
leveled at a political activist: that of a police spy.

The FBI would contact us with offers of money if Bill would serve as an
informer: "After all, the party has thrown you out, why should you persist
in your loyalty?" The IRS made a similar offer. When Bill refused, we were
harassed with fraudulent income tax charges at a time when our total
family income was $3,400. Because no one would give Bill permanent
employment, I was the only provider.

In 1972, my husband died, ending his misery. In 1975 I received a phone
call from Frank Donner, an attorney and a family friend. A document that
had surfaced under the Freedom of Information Act came into his hands
proving the FBI had framed Bill. Frank told me that in 1973 the Attorney
General had been required to turn over documents describing the FBI's
COINTELPRO activities.

Buried in the documents was a report dated January 6, 1965: Communist
Party USA - Counter-Intelligence Program - Disruption of Hate Groups. The
second paragraph begins with a deleted name and then goes on to say, "The
most active and effective functionary of the New York District, Communist
Party USA and leading national officer of the party, through our
counter-intelligence efforts has been expelled from the party...."

***

The report discussed the effects of the FBI operation, saying it has
discouraged many dedicated Communists from activities and discredited the
party in the eyes of the Soviets. In the course of processing these
documents, an FBI clerk apparently eliminated Bill's name at the beginning
of the report and neglected to do so when it recurred near the end.

The truth had finally surfaced.... But what could I do with this new
information? I was put in touch with the ACLU. With their help I was able
to fight back. It was the beginning of 14 years of litigation.... At every
turn our efforts to gain information were met with a cloak of darkness
under the guise of "national security." Eventually we gained access to
30,000 pages of documents concerning our family. Verbatim conversations of
phone calls, years of surveillance, copies of private medical records,
bank records, pictures and more.... Was it really a national security
issue that Bill thought Willie Mays was a better center fielder than
Mickey Mantle?

In addition to the 30,000 pages that I have received, I am told there are
over 50,000 more in existence. Although much is blacked out in the files,
several things are clear -- J. Edgar Hoover personally approved the
operation against my husband.

They had used my husband as the test to see if they could duplicate
handwriting well enough to frame a high ranking adversary and then attempt
to turn him into an informant once he had been ostracized. This is called
a "Snitch Jacket Operation." J. Edgar Hoover wrote compliments for a job
well done to the agents responsible for this COINTELPRO operation.

In the fall of 1989, as we were preparing to go before the Supreme Court,
the Justice Department offered to settle this case. I accepted their offer
of $170,000. Fourteen years is too long a fight. It was time to let my
husband's memory rest. He had been vindicated.

The FBI admitted no wrong. To this day they refuse to acknowledge what
their own files so clearly state: That they framed my husband and
disrupted our lives, simply because we exercised our lawful right to
engage in political activity and association.

I must say it would not have been possible for me to carry on this fight
without the dedication and unfailing support of the American Civil
Liberties Union and the volunteer work by a number of generous lawyers and
law firms.

My story is only one of many. If it were not for a clerical error, the
truth may never have been told. We who are here today have a
responsibility to keep others from suffering my husband's fate.
______________________________
Lillie Albertson is employed by the University of Massachusetts.
__________________________________________________

IV: The Domestic Legacy of the Cold War
Comments on the Cold War and the Human Mind
Milton Schwebel

McCarthyism was the Cold War at its worst.... These years set a pattern of
intimidation and thought control that has had enduring effects.
McCarthyism was a magnified form of what had been the rather typical
political climate in America from about 1870. Yet it did come as a shock;
after all, our country had just fought a costly war for freedom,
participated in the creation of a United Nations and witnessed people
world-wide struggling to liberate themselves from the yolk of colonialism.
One way or the other, the Cold War intruded upon the consciousness of all
people.

***

Einstein defined academic freedom as the right to search for the truth and
publish and teach what one holds to be true. A 1956 study of the "academic
mind" reveals how eroded this right was. Lengthy personal interviews with
2,451 randomly selected college social science professors yielded the
following results: 61 percent reported that an F.B.I. agent talked with
them one or more times in the previous year; 40 percent worried [that]
students might give a warped version of what was said in class which would
lead to false ideas about the teacher's political beliefs; 25 percent said
they went out of their way to refrain from expressing certain opinions or
participating in certain activities. How strangely totalitarian this
sounds.

The obvious effect of intimidation is the conscious avoidance of
controversy. The less obvious result is the gradual elimination of
controversial topics from one's lectures. This response to a sustained
assault on academic freedom is so very damaging because even after the
impetus for it subsides, the unconscious behavior persists.

Today, long after McCarthyism, an organization known as Accuracy in
Academia claims that it knows the truth better than teachers. Its goal is
to use students to monitor classroom teaching for the purpose of detecting
"error." Ordinarily such intimidation falls most heavily on non-tenured
faculty, on those who teach the larger proportion of undergraduate
students.

One important Cold War development has been the
academic-government-industry linkage. Today the research of many
professors at leading universities is supported by federal funds. A very
substantial amount supports studies and consultation for the military.

The result of such Department of Defense predominance goes deeper than the
funding. When, in 1987, the biology department at MIT voted to reject
Pentagon funds, the MIT administration compelled the faculty to reverse
their decision by threatening to deny them Institute support. An end
result is noted by an engineering professor: "It is hardly surprising that
military research in the university leads to military-centered
undergraduate curricula."

***

Which priorities the nation chooses will depend upon the public's
knowledge about the actual policies of its government. But the public
still suffers from what has probably been the greatest cost of the Cold
War -- reduced access to reliable information.

The assault on the news and cultural media during the McCarthy period
instituted the kind of safe conformity that denies citizens the diversity
of opinion and dissent from government positions that is vital to rational
decision making in a democracy. This process leads to two fateful results:
(1) the public catches on too late to spare lives and resources. and (2)
the public feels helpless and apathetic and does not even bother to vote.

The Cold War influenced our psyche in other subtle ways. It compelled us
to live with the knowledge that all life could be extinguished through
error or human folly. During times of crisis, as in the early 1960s and
1980s, many children and teenagers lived with fear. It does not take a
great leap of logic to connect such awareness with a tendency to live fast
and engage in so-called adult activity -- sex, alcohol and drugs.

The atomic/nuclear age is coterminous with the Cold War. The external
threat was used to frighten the population, rationalize bloated defense
budgets and, all in all, turn the nation's attention away from policies
that have as their goal something so simple and ordinary as human happiness.
______________________________
Milton Schwebel is Senior Research Scholar with Harvard Medical School's
Center for Psychological Studies in the Nuclear Age and Professor Emeritus
at Rutgers University. He is the author of several books and articles, and
is a member of the editorial board of seven journals.
__________________________________________________

IV: The Domestic Legacy of the Cold War
The Cold War's Impact on the African American Community
Gerald Horne

The Cold War and its close companion, the Red Scare, had a contradictory
impact on the struggle for civil rights. We had an expansion of civil
rights in the 1950s at a time when civil liberties were being restricted.
Washington found it difficult to win hearts and minds in the world and
point to Moscow as a violator of civil liberties when Blacks in this
country were being treated as second class citizens. This helped create a
dynamic which led to an expansion of civil rights.

***

The civil rights movement, in turn, helped to undermine the domestic basis
of the Cold War. After the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 some of the
first High Court decisions emerged that retreated from the toxic impact of
McCarthyism.

So the Cold War did create conditions allowing civil rights concessions to
emerge, but the price paid - breaking with the Black left - was so high
one has to question whether it was worth it

***

For example, we know that the affirmative action Executive Order issued by
FDR came in the context of the build-up to WWII and the threat by A.
Phillip Randolph to have a march in Washington. On the other hand, we
recognize that part of the Cold War involved a need to oust Blacks on the
left from preeminent positions in the civil rights movements; so we saw
the blacklisting of Paul Robeson and the ouster of W.E.B. DuBois from the
NAACP in 1948. This tended to weaken the struggle for civil rights and
weakened efforts by Blacks on the left to focus on issues of
redistribution of wealth.

***

Certainly it set the stage for narrow-nationalism and centrist attitudes
in the Black community that made it difficult to struggle against the Cold
War and weakened allies of the Black community -- the labor and peace
movements in particular.

The domestic attack on dissent that accompanied the Cold War tended to
strengthen the right wing which helped to tilt the political balance
toward militarism and plunging the U.S. into militarist solutions to
sensitive diplomatic and political problems. Part of the basis for the
attack on domestic dissent is the notion that dissenters were basically
the fifth column from Moscow and that any social upheaval was an
expression of the "hand of Moscow." Right-wing forces used anti-communist
hysteria to destabilize anti-racist reform itself and particularly to
destabilize any critical approach to U.S. foreign policy. This reached its
apotheosis during the 1988 presidential campaign when even the idea of
being a 'liberal" was considered outrageous.

Well, we see that that particular thesis has been weakened because Moscow
has retreated; yet we still see social upheaval taking place in the world.
One would wonder when people in the State Department are going to
recognize that the premise and predicate of many of their policies has
been eradicated.

***

Finally, with regard to this new world order that is allegedly emerging,
it seems that part of this new order may involve the erosion of this
500-year trend of global white supremacy which also has significant
effects for the Black community, the civil rights movement and this country.
______________________________
Gerald Horne is the Chairman of the Department of Black Studies at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Black and
Red: W.E.B. DuBois & the Afro-American Response to the Cold War,
1944-1963.
__________________________________________________

V: Unlocking the Doors to Government Information
Secrecy and the Accurate Recording of History
Page Putnam Miller

As an historian and as an advocate for the historical profession, I am
going to speak from the perspective of three basic presuppositions.

First, I believe that an understanding of the history of American foreign
relations should be a clear priority for the present and for future policy
makers, as well as for scholars and citizens. The bedrock of foreign
policy information and for the conduct of foreign policy should rest on an
accurate record of what has gone on before.

Second, there are legitimate national security needs that must receive
considerable consideration. However, we are concerned that this
consideration and the claim for national security has been an enormous
argument that has become the grounds for extreme over-classification. We
believe the extent to which scholars and citizens are denied access to
information and the duration of denials-how long these records continue to
be withheld -- should be kept to a minimum.

A third point: our ability to understand post World War II history is
being seriously hampered by over-restrictive access to historical
documents.

We have a system that encourages classification to the extent that there
are now probably over a trillion classified documents. The method for
declassifying these records is basically a page by page review, and the
amount of money being spent on declassification is really very small. The
National Archives is basically given this responsibility and they have a
staff of only a handful working full-time on declassification.

***

I'm speaking here of systematic declassification of older records. This is
as opposed to the Freedom of Information Act, which of course historians
use and have to rely on because the basic systematic declassification of
older records is occurring at such a slow pace.

With these three points in mind, historians have been extremely frustrated
over the last decade. We have passed resolutions, we have written letters
to members of Congress, we have talked with legislative aides, and very
little has happened.

***

Let me review for you briefly how historians gain access to information
and have done research, particularly in the field of diplomatic history.
Before the 1930's, most history was written by scholarly gentlemen and
they simply went to the State Department with their credentials and were
allowed to see necessary documents. In the mid-30's the National Archives
was established and most State Department records were transferred
there.... Documents were declassified in a fairly orderly manner. However,
we did not have a policy for declassification until 1972 when President
Nixon issued Executive Order 11652. Based on that order, records were to
be declassified after 30 years, given certain exceptions.

Then we had a Carter order soon after that, and then in 1982 there was the
Reagan Executive Order 12356, which eliminated the time period. The
message of the Reagan order was basically that when in doubt, records
should continue to be classified.... The problem of getting access to
documents has become increasingly difficult.

***

Now let me turn to a glimmer of hope, which involves the Foreign Relations
Series of the State Department, a collection of documents that gives us an
idea of the basic development of our foreign relations.

There was legislation introduced this past summer that dealt with this
Series.... It included a section that called for all State Department
records over thirty years old, with a few exceptions for extremely
sensitive information, to be declassified.... This legislation gave us a
vehicle to say to the public . . . our concerns about declassification.

We are feeling good about this bill because the ranking members of both
the majority and minority sides of the Foreign Relations Committee in the
Senate have supported this legislation. They feel the public does have a
right to know and that the State Department has been far too secretive and
restrictive in their access to records.

* Editor's Note: The proposed legislation is now part of the Foreign
Relations Authorization Act, FY 1992 and 1993, signed into law by
President Bush on October 28, 1991. The law requires that the series be
"thorough, accurate and reliable," and reestablishes the thirty-year rule
for declassification.
______________________________
Page Putnam Miller is Director of the National Coordinating Committee for
the Promotion of History. She is the recipient of a Distinguished Service
Award from the Society of American Archivists for her work in restoring
the independence of the National Archives.
__________________________________________________

V: Unlocking the Doors to Government Information
An Insider's Story
Roger Pilon

What I am here to do basically is tell you a story of my own experience in
being the subject of an espionage investigation while I was serving in the
Reagan Justice Department.

Let me begin with probably the place to begin, namely, I got a call from
the Security Officer at the Justice Department . . . early in January
1988, telling me that two men from the FBI wanted to speak with me . . .
Well, since my wife had gotten a similar call the day before in connection
with a background investigation that was being done on her in connection
with her appointment to be Assistant Secretary of the Interior for
International Affairs, bells went off.... My suspicions were confirmed
shortly thereafter. The background investigation on Juliana had been
proceeding for probably five months.

I sat down with the two agents. We discussed what I had done during my
service at the State Department: the officials I had met, whether anybody
asked to see classified documents, and so forth. Then one put a document
down. "Did you ever see this?" I looked at a classified report to Congress
on the activities-communist influence on activities -- of the ANC, I
believe. I looked at it and said, "I don't know. I saw scores of these
every day. It doesn't ring any bell." He responded: "You gave that
document to your wife, and your wife gave it to officials of the South
African government. You want to tell us about it?" And I said, 'What makes
you think that?" 'We're not going to tell you." That line is very
important, because that was the line that was repeated from there on out.
It was a positively Kafkaesque nightmare in which the allegation is made,
but you're never told what the basis of the allegation is.

My wife had gone through the same experience with her interview, and she
too was flabbergasted and she too was told nothing about the basis of
it.... We headed over to a lawyer and began to lay out the situation. The
thing the agents wanted most was to get us into the polygraph
situation.... I was put on administrative leave, where I remained for nine
months ... with orders to report my comings and goings from home. I was
essentially under house arrest. For months this went on. We couldn't get
any information.... We started trying to piece together what this case was
all about, simply from the interviews that had taken place. This was in
January. In April, Juliana was denied the appointment. The White House
withdrew it simply because they wouldn't give her the security clearance.
In June the proposition was put to me by the department: either resign or
we'll terminate you.

I told my lawyer who was Terry O'Donnell, now the Defense Department's
general counsel, a magnificent lawyer ... Terry put a proposition to the
Justice Department. He had a security clearance because he was Ollie
North's number two lawyer.... He said, "Look, I've got a security
clearance. Let me see what you've got. I will then advise my client,
telling him nothing about what I've seen, whether to press on or to give
up at this point and then I will resign from the case, because I can no
longer represent them in good faith." After a month and a half the Justice
Department accepted.

The case was, as we had expected, tangential, conclusory, drawing straight
lines from A to B to C when there were a thousand other hypotheses that
could be drawn. By narrowing things down we thought there was only one
point of contact. Juliana had a meeting a year earlier when she was with
the Heritage Foundation, in New York, for ten minutes, at the South
African mission, after which, interestingly, she had a meeting with the
FBI. There was an agreement that there would be an exchange of documents
between the mission and her organization.... There was a call that came in
from a guy at the South African mission who was their press officer.... We
thought, probably, that call was intercepted. After all, I had been at the
State Department, had top secret code word clearance, I was then at the
Justice Department with top secret clearance.... It did not surprise me
that we might have covered the mission in some way or other
electronically. This is not something one says in public but one knows it
in this town.

***

Anyway, they must have intercepted a conversation. They must have been
talking about an exchange of documents; she was supposed to send him a
paper she was doing on Soviet influence at the U N. and he was supposed to
send her the items in their file. They put this together with the fact
that this document, which was circulating on the Hill, the biggest sieve
in town, must have gotten into the hands of the South Africans. And with
me working at the State Department at the time, they had a connection.

***

We prepared a long rebuttal about the implausibility of that thesis. In
any event, Terry prepared a classified rebuttal and told us to press on.
And he told us nothing about the case. It went to Ed Meese, who was deeply
troubled by this case because he knew me personally and he didn't think
remotely I had been involved.... Then he (Meese) got Terry's classified
rebuttal and said, "Terry, you've done one heck of a job for your client.
You've raised all kinds of questions none of us here have considered. I've
simply ordered a de novo review of the case to try and address some of
those questions...."

In a short period of time, they sent me a letter and said I was to be
restored with a full security clearance and they thanked me for my
outstanding cooperation. That, we thought, was the end of it.

A year passed. We thought the case was behind us. Then, the Office of
Professional Responsibility issued its 1988 annual report in November of
1989. Not only did they put the case out in the public realm for the first
time, not naming me by name, but they egregiously misstated the results of
the case.

***

It appeared the next day in the paper. They had said ... I resigned in the
face of termination proceedings, which was just about as wrong a statement
of the outcome as it could possibly be. It took eight more months to get
this thing cleared. The then Deputy Attorney General issued a letter
saying they had gotten a second de novo review and the OPR report was
indeed wrong.

We thought then, it was now July, that this was done. Lo and behold, in
October, another leak broke in the case. We are now in suit, and as we
speak our response to the Justice Department's answer is being filed in
the district court.

***

Let me draw some things together from this case. The securities network in
this country is the consummate old boy network. It is as tight and as
closed a network as you can ever imagine, for understandable reasons in
part. . .

A second point I wanted to draw is that oftentimes this national security
and sources and methods objection is more often than not a screen behind
which the greatest incompetence and corruption can hide.

***

And the final point is that there is, and we must not underestimate this,
a systematic bias among government functionaries to protect and expand
their own interests.

***

I urge you then to encourage the open procedures that will enable,
consistent with national security, people to get at the kind of
information that may have been behind the case such as ours.
______________________________
Roger Pilon is Director of the CATO Institute's Center for Constitutional
Studies. He served in five senior posts in the Reagan Administration
including Director of Policy for the State Department's Bureau of Human
Rights and Humanitarian Affairs.
__________________________________________________

V: Unlocking the Doors to Government Information
The Impact of Secrecy on Federal Government Workers
Turna Lewis

The story that Roger [Pilon] just relayed to you is not the exception, but
typically the way that investigations are conducted.... There needs to be
a balance between the valid government interests of national security and
ensuring that employees have certain individual and privacy rights that
are not intrusively encroached upon.

***

The law regarding security clearance procedures and free speech rights of
employees is unsettled.... How should the government determine suitability
for a security clearance? What is the proper subject of inquiry? What
constitutes impermissible invasion of an employee's privacy? Government
typically maintains that employees have no entitlement to a security
clearance, and therefore they should not be entitled to any due process.
Obviously, that's not what individual advocacy groups or unions advocate.

***

Did you know that if you want to work for the Departments of Justice,
State or Defense that you have to undergo a background check, and all
employees are required to have at least a secret clearance. The basis for
requiring a background check of all employees is Executive Order 10450,
signed by President Eisenhower in 1953. The order basically provides the
authority for government agencies to establish their own security
clearance procedures for applicants.

***

Some of the things the government looks at that we think are inappropriate
are lifestyles or ideology.... Every employee who works for the federal
government is required to submit to a background check. It might be
Standard Form 85 or Standard Form 86, which goes into every place you've
ever lived for the past ten years, positions, what membership
organizations you belong to, and whether or not you've been under the care
of a psychiatrist.

***

Does the government really need to know the information they are asking?
They also ask questions regarding illegal drug use over the past five
years, yet the form does not provide any provision that employees will not
be the subject of any civil or criminal action for answering this question
honestly. Another problem with the SF-86 is that there is a broad grant of
authority that the employee is required to sign for the release of
information.

***

The next issue is what happens when a security clearance is denied to an
employee or to an applicant. Right now the case law is such that courts
grant great deference to executive agencies.... Courts have said that no
one has a right to a security clearance and therefore you're not entitled
to any kind of due process. It is their argument that security clearances
require an expertise which is not reasonably possible for an outside body
[such as the courts] to have.

The internal process is shrouded in secrecy.... It is a situation where
employees may be walking the halls for months, or maybe for years, while
the State Department decides what they want to do.

This is because there are no procedures which require that an agency
process a request or review a case within a certain period of time.
Generally, when this is done, the State Department wants the employee to
simply resign.

***

Minimum due process should include a written explanation of reasons for
the denial and a right to appeal, including a hearing, to an independent
body. We also think that minimum due process for employees should include
time limits on the suspension of a security clearance and a time limit on
the length of the investigation.

***

I want to now address the SF-312 nondisclosure agreement. The issue is
sometimes over-classification of documents, and under what conditions it
is appropriate for an employee or for someone who has signed a
non-disclosure agreement to disclose that information. If employees do not
sign, they risk losing their security clearance and their job.

***

One of the concerns about the SF-312 is the definition of classified
information, which is defined as being marked or unmarked. It can be oral
communications.  It can be unclassified information which meets the
standards for classification and is in the process of classification and
termination. What this does is cause the employee not to know if
information is classified or not -- so the effect is to chill
communication between employees.

***

AFSA [American Foreign Service Association] filed a lawsuit regarding the
Standard Form 312 on these grounds. As a result of the lawsuit,
legislation was passed which required amending the SF-312. Congress said
the form must be amended so that it includes language which specifies that
in conflicts between secrecy requirements and free speech, free speech
supersedes the former.... We'll have to see exactly how that's going to be
implemented.
______________________________
Turna Lewis is General Counsel for the American Foreign Service
Association where she handles matters related to security clearances,
security investigations and the due process rights of federal employees.
__________________________________________________

V: Unlocking the Doors to Government Information
Exposing the Pentagon's Secret Budget
Tim Weiner

One of the enduring ironies of the Cold War is that our open and robust
and contentious society took on a few of the sullen and secretive and
closed aspects of the society it was trying to defeat.... I have been
working off and on for five years off of ... the public budget of the
Pentagon, which is in essence a false document because hidden in that
document in many creative and inventive ways, some obvious, some not, is
between 35 and 36 billion dollars a year of public funds, that works out
to roughly a hundred million dollars a day. This is known inside the
Pentagon and increasingly outside the Pentagon as the "black budget."

In essence, the black budget is the secret treasury of the President, the
Director of Central Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense. It funds
each of the eleven major U.S. intelligence agencies and also funds
research and development and procurement of some of the most expensive and
least sensible weapons in the Pentagon's arsenal.

There are two separate issues here. One is the whole notion that you can
have a classified budget. The question arises from Article 1, Section 9,
awes 7 of the United States Constitution: "No money shall be drawn from
the Treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law and a
regular statement and account of the receipts and expenditures of all
public money shall be published." Simplicity outsell The framers did not
envision a secret budget. Now the Cold War changed that.

***

Something transformed the black budget in the 1980s, and that was the
masking of the costs of some of the most expensive weapons the Pentagon
creates. My good friend Ernie Fitzgerald often says there are two stages
in the life of a Pentagon program:  too early to tell and too late to
stop. When you add to this equation, too secret to debate, you run into
some serious problems. I want to run past a few of them.

We had poured close to 25 billion dollars into the B-2 Stealth Bomber
before a single word of public debate was ever heard on the floor of
Congress. To date we have committed 32 billion dollars to this program. We
have produced two planes. They have performed three percent of the
requisite flying time of their tests. It's unclear what is going to become
of this program, but the best possible result from a fiscal perspective is
that we will produce a wing of planes, each of which, at 70 tons of
weight, will cost more than if it had been built of solid gold. They used
to talk of gold-plated weapons at the Pentagon. This is a solid gold
bomber, and it is a nuclear bomber which will most likely gather dust in
its hanger unless a full-tilt nuclear war with the Soviet Union begins.

Another much less known program is MILSTAR, which stands for the Military
Strategic Tactical and Relay System. This is envisioned as a constellation
of eight satellites in space and a network of ground terminals on earth at
a cost of 35 to 40 billion dollars that will -- after a strategic nuclear
war with the Soviet Union, after Washington is gone, after the Pentagon is
reduced to smoking, radiating ruins, after the government as we know it
ceases to exist will weave together what remains of our strategic nuclear
forces so that we can go on fighting the Soviets, not for days or weeks,
but for six months. Now, public debate on such a program, and at such a
cost of 35 to 40 billion dollars if completed, is in the interest of the
United States. But it can't be debated because it's too secret.

***

What you have when you have a secret weapons budget is a realm in which
public debate cannot intrude, the press is severely circumscribed, and the
Freedom of Information Act is totally useless. We must begin to ask
ourselves: "Who are we protecting this information from?" I argue in my
book, Blank Check, that the costs of weaponry, not the technologies, not
the designs, and in some cases not even their names, but the costs of
weaponry is information that properly belongs to the citizens of a
democracy.

We must gain more information in this realm and increase public debate, as
has been suggested by the Rockefeller Commission on the CIA, the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence in the 70s and, in fact, every executive
or legislative commission that has ever examined this. If we could unmask
some of the costs of weaponry we could have a more intelligent debate on
what we are spending in the name of national defense and national
security.

***

If we continue to spend 300 billion dollars and more a year on the
Pentagon's budget, and if we don't address other national security needs,
we, I submit, will follow the Soviets into the abyss into which they
plunged.
______________________________
Tim Weiner is the Washington correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer
and author of Blank Check, a book about the secret intelligence budget.
His series about secret government spending won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize
for national reporting.
__________________________________________________

VI:  A Constitutional National Defense
The War Powers Debate
Harold Koh

The War Powers debate of January 1991 demonstrated that it will be a long
time before anybody seriously makes the argument that the President can
enter a large-scale premeditated, potentially sustained war against an
aggressor nation without the approval of Congress.

In our history there are 211 occasions where the President committed
troops without congressional approval ... and only five examples of large
scale wars where the President received such authorization: the two World
Wars, Vietnam, Korea and Iraq. In four of the five cases, except Korea,
the President came to Congress. [For] the two World Wars he got a
declaration; in Vietnam he got the Gulf of Tonkin, however he managed to
get it; and in the current case of Iraq he got the resolution from
Congress.

Congress recognized that it was going to give up its prerogative to
declare war unless it asserted it, and began debate even before the
President came to Congress on January 10 of this year. The courts also
seem to have finally recognized this, as seen through Judge Greene's
decision in the Dellums case, Dellums v. Bush .... The judge adopted both
the view that the President did not have the authority to commit troops
without congressional approval and that this was a question that a court
could decide .... The important thing to recognize was that this was a
very powerful statement by a court -- a warning to the President.

***

The President, Congress and the courts have now all accepted this
proposition. This issue may have subsided simply because it will become
more and more ridiculous to even conceive of having begun a war like this
without congressional approval. Seventy-five thousand people were in D.C.
protesting the war a week ago. If there had been no congressional
approval, there would have been 750,000.

The Wall Street Journal, days before the resolution, discovered in a
massive poll that 71 percent of Americans thought congressional approval
was required. We had a moment of national constitutional debate of the
kind we have had only a couple times in recent memory ... and the majority
answer was clear.

***

That's the good news. The bad news is that the decision to go to war was
made very badly. We should all be embarrassed about our national
institutions and frightened for the future. The President should have come
to Congress on at least three occasions. In August, September and in
November, after the escalation. Or he could have called a special session.
But he didn't do any of these things.

That does not mean that Congress escapes blame. Congress could have
demanded that he come and could have invoked the War Powers Resolution to
prevent the escalation from happening, or at least to challenge it.
Neither of these courses of action were taken. Instead it waited until the
absolute last minute to address the question...

[T]he declare war debate is really part of a much broader debate regarding
our foreign policy. The problem has two alimonies: a constitutional
element and a policy element.

Constitutionally we have gotten ourselves into a situation where the
system is out of whack. The President acts secretly and delegates power to
unaccountable institutions. Congress has every incentive to avoid
responsibility. And the courts have every incentive to avoid passing
judgment. As a result, we have a system where the President acts, Congress
does nothing, and then the courts refuse to rule on the legality of his
actions. I think that is both unconstitutional and bad policy because the
President is a victim of the system as much as he is a villain in it. He
does not have the long-term political strength that comes from having
congressional support and he does not have the kind of validation that
comes from getting judicial approval.

This problem has cropped up across the foreign affairs spectrum also, with
regard to emergency economic power, military aid, covert action,
intelligence oversight and treaty affairs. I saw it when I worked at the
Justice Department from 1983-85 and again in the Iran-Contra affair.
People viewed the Iran-Contra affair as an aberration, not a systemic
problem, and so Congress did nothing.

***

What about press access? How can we judge what's happening if our press
can not find out what's going on? As an Asian-American. discrimination at
home against Arab-Americans is something that deeply concerns me, and
which I see happening again.

I think if we are serious about a new international legal order, then we
have to urge our governmental officials to actually follow the predicate
of an international legal order. I think that's the real peace dividend.
______________________________
Harold Koh is a professor at Yale Law School specializing in the U.S.
Constitution and Foreign Affairs. Koh served with the Office of Legal
Counsel of the Department of Justice in the Reagan Administration.
__________________________________________________

VI:  A Constitutional National Defense
Discrimination Against Women and Homosexuals in the Military
Michelle Benecke

I want to go over the legal framework which permits formalized
discrimination against women, gay men and lesbians [in] service, and ...
to expose fallacies on which the military's policies are based.

***

The military is granted exceptions to laws which mandate access to public
forums, i.e. you cannot picket or leaflet on military bases. The military
is granted an exception to general rules which allow non-harmful religious
practices, such as the wearing of yarmulkes or other religious symbols
while in uniform.... The military has also been granted exceptions to
strict judicial scrutiny of discrimination on the basis of race during
wartime and [to continuing] womens' exclusion from the draft. . .
Additionally, every court challenge brought by lesbians and gays against
the military policy on constitutional grounds has failed.

***

I think it is both timely and important to mention the combat exclusion
policy, given that over 11 percent of our forces in the Gulf are women....
Even though we now recognize that women are there, Americans fail to
understand what women are being asked to do. The term combat exclusion
would lead one to believe that women are not involved in combat. But the
Patriot missile crews who have women crew members and the Marine woman who
may have been taken POW yesterday morning would vehemently protest that
implication.

In fact, the definition of combat has been a semantic game in the Defense
Department for at least a decade, with the definition linked more to the
availability of manpower and the social/political climate of the time than
to the actual capabilities of women -- which is offered as the rationale
for the policy.... When men have been available, definitions of combat
have broadened to encompass more jobs and to exclude women from them; when
men have not been available the definition has narrowed.

When I was in the military women were admitted because there was
difficulty in recruiting and retaining men in the post-Vietnam era.... So
women were recruited to fill the missile specialties within my branch. At
the same time women started filling these specialties, those jobs were
re-coded from combat to noncombat without changing the mission or the
purpose of the units to which women were assigned. This is not just my
branch; this has been a typical pattern.

At the Third Armored Cavalry regiment in Fort Bliss, Texas, which is now
in the front lines in the Gulf, women were assigned to fill support and
supply positions because men were not available. When the Pentagon found
out, it ordered the removal of women from the units. But local commanders,
recognizing that the unit could not function without the support, got
around the requirement by assigning the women on paper to a non-combat
unit but leaving the women in the combat positions.

***

Also, it's an established military doctrine to first take out command
control communications, supply lines, and nuclear and biological and
chemical assets. This is where the combat exclusion policy assigns our
women, setting them up to be casualties in any initial strike.... The
combat exclusion policy serves to preserve prestigious fields in the
military which are required for advancement for men, at the same time
denying the truth of what women do in the service.

The rationale behind banning gays and lesbians is that their inclusion
would hurt the discipline, morale and good order of the services.... The
case of Perry Watkins should be cited here. Watkins was inducted during
the Vietnam era despite the fact [that] he notified the military he was
gay and continued to notify them through the entire 16 years of his
service. Watkins commander said in court he was one of the most trusted
and respected men in the unit and that he did not wish to see him
discharged. This is not atypical. Gays and lesbians have consistently
furnished outstanding performance records and testimony that their
presence did not hurt discipline or morale.

In its implementation, the policy [against homosexuals] has been used
disproportionately, against women.... The 1980s was characterized by a
wave of investigations against women ... by picking up those who were
suspected or rumored to be gay and threatening them with prison if they
did not name other lesbians.

***

The impact of such policies has been to force women to act in gender roles
that are traditionally sanctioned.... Women have to try to find a fine
line between accepted femininity to ward off suspicions they might be gay,
but they can't be so pretty that they are not taken seriously. This places
a tremendous amount of stress on women in the system to conform.
______________________________
Michelle Benecke served in the U.S. army from 1983-1989 as Battery
Commander and Air Defense System Officer. She is the author of "Women in
Nontraditional Fields," and is presently a student at Harvard Law School.
__________________________________________________

VI:  A Constitutional National Defense
The Government's Secret Wars
Prexy Nesbitt

In mid-1949, the covert action arm of the CIA had about 300 employees in
seven overseas field stations. Three years later there were 2,800
employees in 47 field stations. In the same period their budget grew from
4.7 million to 82 million dollars.

***

By 1953 the CIA had major covert action programs underway in some 48
different countries, consisting of propaganda, paramilitary and political
action operations, and other tactics.... And with post-World War II,
covert action took off to a new level, with the "Third World" being the
special target of U.S. covert activities.

***

What do we mean by covert activities? In 1968 Richard Bissell, former
deputy director of clandestine services for the CIA, listed them as
follows:

(1) political advice and counsel;

(2) subsidies to an individual;

(3) financial support and technical assistance to political parties;

(4) the support of private organizations: labor unions, business firms,
cooperatives, churches;

(5) covert propaganda;

(6) private training of individuals and exchange of people;

(7) private economic operations;

(8) paramilitary or political action operations designed to overthrow or
to support a regime;

(9) media operations, including disinformation activities.

I would add to this initial list the following -- bank and banking
operations -- and would particularly cite the role of the CIA in working
with the First National Bank of Maryland from 1981 to 1985 to help in the
payment of some 23 million dollars in covert weapons purchases for Chad or
Angola in Africa.

In particular let us look at the record in this very brief time of the
Bush Administration. In 17 months the ex-CIA director Bush has used
military force to invade and overthrow the government of Panama, without
congressional approval. He has also helped to sustain and to further a
pattern of sending in repressive military force in the name of fighting
drugs.

We can also look at the increase in arms shipments and advisors.... There
was the financing, equipping and training the special anti-Khaddafi army
that was based in Chad and has operated until this last year. There was
the special air-sea operation in August of 1990 into Monrovia, Liberia.
Very few people know that we sent 255 US. Marines that helped attack
helicopters and jets to evacuate allegedly some 61 Americans.... It was
linked to another operation aimed at protecting classified U.S. materials,
communication and intelligence facilities all over Liberia.

***

The current reality of CIA and covert actions is an annual budget of
somewhere around 10-12 billion dollars. But when you look at the aggregate
budget of CIA, counterintelligence in the FBI, the National Security
Agency and the various military intelligence agencies, it is an annual
budget somewhere between 30 and 35 billion dollars a year. No one knows
where those figures end up.

One of the clear patterns is a tremendous growth in the amount and scale
of covert actions through the years.

In 1980 there were about 14,000 CIA employees. By 1986 it was closer to
23,000. In 1976 there were some 300 identified CIA operations. By 1981
there were well over 1,000 operations. In 1978 there were 12-14 major
operations... but 44 by 1988.

Throughout this same period we see a growing collaboration between the CIA
and [the] Army.... It becomes even harder to get information about the
military. Many of their operations fall into an arena that has limited
oversight by either the intelligence committees or the military
committees.

***

Operating within US. foreign policy is a fundamental and trans-partisan
assumption that the U.S. government and/or its operatives retain the right
and obligation to intervene overtly or covertly in the affairs of Third
World nations anew time it deems necessary. I believe this notion is
derived from the twin roots in U.S. history of racism and of imperialism.
It has resulted in and [still] results in incalculable terror, death and
ruin being visited upon the lives of the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin
America, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Whether it's our marines or whether it's our dollars to hire someone else
or someone else's destabilization arsenals, the end effect is a
large-scale and sustained war for the peoples of the Third World.... I
think that makes the U.S., either directly or indirectly, the ultimate
killer nation.... I predict that after the Gulf we are going to have many
other scenarios like the one we see unfolding now.
______________________________
Prexy Nesbitt is the senior consultant in the U.S. for the People's
Republic of Mozambique. Previously he was Associate Director of the
American Committee on Africa.
__________________________________________________

VI:  A Constitutional National Defense
The Selective Service System
Reverend Bill Yolton

I want to talk about three levels in which the selective service system
serves non-military purposes. The system is at this moment a very
interesting paralegal entity. It is not really a set of laws, and it has
the lowest standard of proof of any other system of law in the U.S.,
except for the condition of prisoners. All you need in the selective
service system is any basis in fact and there's no court review.

***

The system is conceived, therefore, as an emergency system in which most
of the constitutional guarantees are, in a sense, set aside in order to
allow the nation to respond in great emergency. But actually it does other
things. It serves civil religion. It helps [maintain] control in this
society. Jerry Schanck's study of the local board in the First World War
shows how that board, with the sheriff as the chairman, managed to keep
all the Blacks in that community successfully down on the plantation. The
informal control system now had federal law on its side.

Of course there is always the fine of five years and/or $250,000 for young
men who fail to register. These young men are encouraged by "it's quick,
it's easy, it's the law, break-dance down to your nearest local post
office and sign up for the draft." Except in this society nobody can
breakdance down to the nearest post office and sign up to vote. It's much
more important in this society that people sign up to kill people than to
sign up to exercise their democratic responsibilities.

And deviation in the system is subject to the whims of local boards, with
few controls.... Since registration was begun, there have been no
oversight hearings by Armed Services [congressional committees]. The only
place we get our foot in the door is to attack the budget through a House
committee that reviews the budget annually.

Otherwise, this system has had a new set of regulations put in place which
even the memoranda from the Pentagon indicated in the 1970's would require
major revisions of the statute in order for these to be implemented.

It's very interesting to see how the draft will work and what methods will
be able to be effective in challenging the authority system when it
finally begins to act.... With the classifying authority having been
removed by statute from the local board ... power has now been given over
to the Pentagon to make those decisions.

So the system is ready to go at any moment. Once the declaration of war
comes, the President can invoke the draft again and it can operate
immediately. The next day the computer will issue the mailgrams to the low
lottery numbers from the lottery the night before and people will go
quickly, not to pass go, but straight to the induction center. That's a
ten day time sequence we're talking about.

***

What we have is a system which has a very low standard of democratic
rights present within it. At a second level it has always served
red-baiting -- it's part of the anti-communism spirit of the society.
Turnage says... the draft is as much a weapon in our arsenals as any
missile or bomber. It's designed to help people share in certain values in
society. Understandably, the recruitment of local board members tends to
be out of ex-veterans and people who are "patriotically" willing to see
this thing run.

***

The liberties of young men who are conscientious objectors are very
limited.... The Solomon Amendments basically say that that person is
excluded from opportunities for higher education or job training or
employment in the executive branch of the government. That's most jobs at
the federal level. So these persons are essentially shunted aside from
exercising their freedom about their own consciences.... [This is] one of
those terrible dilemmas that young people are in at this time who want to
look at this issue seriously.

***

So this is the system that is currently in operation and to which our
young people will be subject when it comes into operation at that very
quick time schedule. We fear that because the changes have not taken place
in the system before it goes into action, under the wartime constraints it
will be very hard to remedy the problems with it.
______________________________
The Reverend William Yolton is Executive Director of the National
Interreligious Service Board for Conscientious Objectors. his critique, A
Short History of Selective Service and Why it Should be Ended is in
publication.
__________________________________________________

VII:  Free Trade in Ideas - An Idea Whose Time Has Come
An Unexplained 44 Days of Detention
Choichiro Yatani

[When I was detained], aliens from all over the world wondered why I was
there. I could not answer why. Simply, the government never explained why
they were arresting and detaining me for 44 days. But when I was released
from detention, according to the New York Times, one U.S. official said,
"This is a troublemaker from Japan. There's no more benefit to keep him in
detention, so let's release him."

Let me explain what happened to me. In 1986 I went to Amsterdam because my
research paper on antinuclear activism was invited by the organizer of the
international [academic] conference.... I attended and talked about [the]
nuclear issue.

***

When I returned to New York City the government officials stopped me and
took me to the detention. I asked them, 'Why are you doing this to me?"
[They said], "We don't know yet...." So I thought they are kidding me....
Three weeks I was there without knowing why. Then they explained that I
was involved in a big crime and that I was a national security risk.

What concerned them most was something political I had done a long time
ago. And when I went to court, the court said I had no judiciary power
because the State Department revoked my visa two weeks before. Therefore,
without a visa I had to leave.... Why, I asked? No explanation was
necessary [in their view].

***

Fortunately, the Lawyers' Committee, the New York Times, the Washington
Post and other publicity described it as Kafkaesque. Nobody knew why this
happened. I thought this couldn't be happening particularly in the country
of U.S.A., because everybody knows this is the most democratic, most open,
free society in the world.

I told everybody that I was an anti-war activist during the 1960's and
70's. I was arrested and convicted, but that happened to everybody.... But
what was the crime, according to the U.S., I don't know because they
continue to refuse to disclose the files. Although everything is
speculative, I guess my anti-war activism in Japan and the anti-nuclear
research I have done contributed to the government charges that I was a
"national security risk."

The last 25 years we have been totally blind from the reality in the world
because by the Cold War mentality many American people are totally branded
by the government.

***

Mr. Bush himself declared the Cold War over. But I cannot accept his
declaration unless he initiates the repeal of the McCarran-Walter Act and
my name is removed from State Department "Lookout Lists of Undesirable
Aliens." In January I filed a suit to a federal court against the State
and Justice Departments [demanding] that they remove my name from their
lists because of the 1990 Immigration Act. This is the first legal
challenge of its type.

According to a recently published book by [the] Lawyers' Committee for
Human Rights, over 300,000 foreigners are listed in that government
blacklist. It is not merely inconvenience and denial of travel rights
which are of concern, but rather the U.S. government's denial of American
principles and benefits to its citizens.

The government does not like to show the reality. So what can we do to end
the Cold War?... Three things: (1) repeal the McCarran-Walter Act;... (2)
remove all names from government alien lists, and... (3) we have to
establish a new world order, not by the government, but by the people.

I hope my legal challenge will benefit others charged by the government
and will contribute to ending the Cold War at home so that we, Americans
as well as many in other countries, can make the international community a
better and more secure world.
______________________________
Choichiro Yatani is a lecturer at SUNY/Stonybrook and at St. Joseph's
College. His lawsuit is the first legal challenge to government alien
blacklisting since the Immigration Act was enacted in November 1990.
__________________________________________________

VII:  Free Trade in Ideas - An Idea Whose Time Has Come
Restrictions on Travel to Vietnam
John Terzano

In 1981, I was a member of the first group of combat veterans to return to
Vietnam since the end of the war. I have subsequently made several trips
to Vietnam and Cambodia. I understand the powerful effect the experience
of traveling to Vietnam can have, not only on the American veterans who
have returned, but also on the Vietnamese people themselves.... This free
exchange of ideas has enabled veterans to lead the way to assist the
Vietnamese people, to rebuild their country and provide them with
humanitarian assistance.

While the current law does not prohibit Americans from traveling
individually to Vietnam, the ban on organized trips effectively bars
Americans from visiting the countries of Indochina, and these restrictions
complicate the process of obtaining visas and arranging in country travel
and accommodations.

***

There are two categories of individuals that most often express the desire
to return to Vietnam: Vietnamese-Americans and American veterans. Both
groups have valid reasons and needs for returning, however, neither group
has a professional medium to arrange or enable them to carry out their
intentions because organized travel has been banned.

Perhaps the most poignant information an individual learns during a trip
to Vietnam is that, for the Vietnamese, the war is over.... And yet,
America continues to treat Vietnam as the enemy.... The effects of the
embargo and the current isolation imposed on Vietnam have severely
hindered Vietnam's ability to rebuild their country, and as a result
Vietnam is often unable to provide even the most basic of needs to its
citizens.

This is a sharp contrast to the way that America has treated other former
enemies. Following World War II, the United States helped Japan become one
of the most powerful industrial nations in the world and rebuilt Germany
with the Marshall Plan.... Even after Korea, the American veteran
community supported reconciliation efforts.

In President Bush's inaugural address he stated, "the statute of
limitations on the Vietnam War has been reached," and that "no great
nation can afford to be sundered by a memory." The President's rhetoric,
however, does not match his policies. It is ironic that President Bush has
consistently defended his China policy by claiming that he does not "wish
to isolate China by no contact and set back the clock...." It is difficult
for me to reconcile the difference in the policies this Administration
applies to China and Vietnam.

It is through the free exchange of information and ideas that tremendous
changes in the world can take place. Although it may sound somewhat trite,
I fully believe that rock-and-roll and blue jeans did more to bring the
Berlin Wall down than the trillion dollars spent on a defense budget.

Unofficial dialogue between nations has a special relevance in a democracy
where public opinion has a great effect on policy making. Indeed, Justice
William Douglas recognized this some 34 years ago when he wrote in Kent v.
Dulles: "The right to travel is part of the liberty of which a citizen
cannot be deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment.
Freedom of movement across frontiers in either direction was a part of our
heritage.... It may be as dose to the heart of the individual as a choice
of what he eats or wears or reads. Freedom of movement is basic in our
scheme of values."

Justice Douglas went on to quote Zachariah Chaffey, a writer on the First
Amendment who stated, "Travel abroad enables American citizens to
understand that people like themselves live abroad and helps them to be
well informed on public issues.... In many different ways direct contact
with other countries contributes to sounder decisions at home "

This view of travel was once not only an ideal, it was once our law. It is
time that we as a nation returned to these core values and principles and
allow once again the free and open exchange of ideas and the right of U.S.
citizens to travel abroad.
_____________________________
John Terzano is president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.
He was a member of the first delegation of combat veterans to return to
Vietnam since the end of that war.
__________________________________________________

VII: Free Trade in Ideas - An Idea Whose Time Has Come
Legislating the Free Flow of Information
Bari Schwartz

I want to give you an overview of the law in the area of [restrictions on
the right to travel and exchange information] and on the more cheerful
side tell you what some members of Congress are trying to do about this.

***

Congressman Berman has specialized in the travel issues. I think many of
you are familiar with the fact that Congressman Barney Frank has worked on
the McCarran-Walter issues of entry of people into the United States.
Senator Moynihan is very much involved and concerned in this area. There
are a number of members that are involved in this effort.

I want to bring you greetings from Congressman Berman.... He definitely
will be introducing a bill in the next month or so to remove the authority
for travel restrictions under the ambit of economic embargoes.... I have
to tell you that the prospects for this legislation standing alone are
dubious.

***

Even under the current law there is no reason why the regulations have to
go as far as they do. It's the Office of Foreign Assets Control in the
Treasury Department that administers and implements any sort of economic
embargoes that the President declares against particu