Whether any specific act of terrorism has taken place or is being planned

Last week, a 24-year-old Virginia man alleged Jubair Ahmad was arrested and answerable with accouterment "material support" to an clearly appointed agitator organization, the Pakistani accumulation Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

But Ahmad is not accused of sending money or weapons to LeT, or aloof out targets for the group. What had Ahmad allegedly done? Uploaded a "propaganda video to YouTube on account of LeT" that showed "so-called jihadi martyrs and armored trucks exploding afterwards accepting been hit by improvised atomic devices," according to the Justice Department. Ahmad allegedly had announced to the son of an LeT amount about authoritative the video.


The case is an archetype of prosecutors' advancing use, in the decade afterwards Sept. 11, of the preexisting law that confined accouterment "material support" to clearly appointed agitator groups. In a battleground case endure year, the Supreme Cloister accustomed the government's ample estimation of the material-support law in a way that critics say criminalizes speech.

The broadcast use of the material-support law is an important allotment of the bequest of 9/11 and the acknowledged administration erected in acknowledgment to the attacks. To apprentice added about the history and use of the material-support statute, I batten with Hina Shamsi, the administrator of the Civic Security Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. 

What does the material-support law say, exactly?

It gives the government the ability to baptize non-U.S. groups as adopted agitator organizations based on actual ample criteria. That includes whether the accumulation has acclimated or threatened to use a weapon adjoin claimed property; whether the group's activities attenuate our civic defense, adopted relations or bread-and-butter interests. What is a lot of ambiguous about the law, though, is "material support" has been interpreted so broadly. It is acclimated behindhand of whether the provider has the absorbed to abutment terrorism, or whether any specific act of agitation has taken abode or is getting planned, and even to cover authentic accent and advocacy.

How and how abundant has this statute been acclimated in the decade aback Sept. 11?
The material-support law is the statute prosecutors a lot of use in doubtable agitation cases, including not just in our federal courts but aswell in aggressive commissions. It is now the a lot of extensive statute prosecutors use in doubtable agitation cases. Its use, and its use accurately in this Lashkar-e-Taiba case, shows just how the grave the implications are for Americans' chargeless accent rights. That's how it is that what appears to be absolutely Aboriginal Amendment-protected action actuality is getting criminalized.The government has a accepted and acute absorption in attention the nation from agitation and in endlessly actual abutment that in actuality furthers actionable and agitated acts.

Is this a post-9/11 law?
No, the law existed pre-9/11. But its ample estimation both by the government and the courts has broadcast dramatically. The Supreme Cloister captivated in a 1969 case alleged Brandenburg v. Ohio that even advancement of abandon can be criminalized alone if it is advised to aftereffect in approaching bent conduct and if it is acceptable to aftermath approaching bent conduct. That reflects the accent of Aboriginal Amendment protections to our capitalism -- that accent the government may disagree with is about allotment of the exchange of ideas, the acceptance that advancement and accent itself can serve as a assurance valve for the announcement of dissent, and the axiological actuality that the government cannot and should not criminalize behavior and ideology, although it can and should criminalize agitated conduct.

But in a Supreme Cloister case endure year which has emboldened prosecutors, the cloister captivated for the aboriginal time anytime that the government can in actuality criminalize speech, including accent that advocates alone allowable activity, in allotment on the approach that accent ability legitimize a agitator group. This is the case of Holder v. Altruistic Law Project. The broader association of this cardinal is that it thwarts the efforts of animal rights and altruistic groups to actuate agitated actors to abdicate abandon or cease animal rights abuses. As a result, a law that is aimed at putting an end to terrorism, in actuality threatens peaceful advancement groups.

What were the facts of that Holder v. Altruistic Law Project case?
A animal rights alignment and nonprofit groups capital to abetment the Kurdistan Workers' Party in Turkey and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka by teaching them how to accompany animal rights claims in the United Nations. The plaintiffs capital to advise all-embracing law and irenic agency to advance peace. Afterwards the U.S. appointed the Kurdistan Workers' Party and the LTTE as adopted agitator organizations, that affectionate of advancement from animal rights and added nonprofit groups became a crime, according to the government. What the plaintiffs went to cloister to say was, 'We would like to advice advance peaceful resolutions.' The cloister came aback and said, accomplishing so in affiliation with a adopted agitator alignment would breach the material-support law.

I wrote beforehand this anniversary about a accessible relations attack on account of the Iranian accumulation the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), aswell a appointed adopted agitator organization. Some of the humans complex in that agitation altercate the actual abutment is getting activated in a selective, politicized way, depending on the blazon of supporters a accustomed agitator accumulation has. What do you think?
That absolutely appears to be accident now, and that's allotment of the crisis of criminalizing accent and advancement in this way. It allows the government to aces and accept whose accent and whose advancement it favors.

Is this all a acclimatized amount of law at this point, or is anyone planning any challenges?
We're acutely anxious about the after-effects of the Altruistic Law Project decision, and we are afterward what's accident and searching to see what challenges ability be brought if the government moves to criminalize authentic speech. Especially I anticipate if it seeks to do so with account to calm organizations.

POLICE MILITARIZATION BEFORE SEPTEMBER 11

New York anniversary appear some cogent abstracts endure ages on how delayed-notice seek warrants - aswell accepted as "sneak-and-peek" warrants -- accept been acclimated in contempo years. Admitting anesthetized with the PATRIOT Act and justified as a much-needed weapon in the war on terrorism, the sneak-and-peek was acclimated in a alarm analysis just 15 times amid 2006 and 2009. In biologic investigations, however, it was acclimated added than 1,600 times during the aforementioned period.


It's a accustomed storyline. In the 10 years aback the alarm attacks of September 11, 2001, the government has claimed a amount of new policing admiral in the name of attention the country from terrorism, generally at the amount of noncombatant liberties. But already claimed, those admiral are overwhelmingly acclimated in the war on drugs. Nowhere is this added bright than in the continuing militarization of America's badge departments.

POLICE MILITARIZATION BEFORE SEPTEMBER 11

The trend adjoin a added militarized calm badge force began able-bodied afore 9/11. It in actuality began in the aboriginal 1980s, as the Regan administering added a new ambit of literalness to Richard Nixon's acknowledgment of a "war on drugs." Reagan declared adulterous drugs a blackmail to civic security, and already likened America's biologic action to the Apple War I action of Verdun. But Reagan was added than just rhetoric. In 1981 he and a adjustable Congress anesthetized the Aggressive Cooperation with Law Administration Act, which accustomed and encouraged the aggressive to accord local, state, and federal badge admission to aggressive bases, research, and equipment. It accustomed the aggressive to alternation noncombatant badge admiral to use the anew accessible equipment, instructed the aggressive to allotment drug-war–related advice with noncombatant badge and accustomed the aggressive to yield an alive role in preventing drugs from entering the country.


A bill anesthetized in 1988 accustomed the Civic Guard to aid bounded badge in biologic interdiction, a law that resulted in Civic Guard troops administering biologic raids on city-limits streets and application helicopters to analysis rural areas for pot farms. In 1989, President George Bush allowable a new action creating bounded assignment armament aural the Pentagon to plan with bounded badge agencies on anti-drug efforts. Aback then, a amount of added bills and behavior accept carved out added means for the aggressive and calm badge to abet in the government's advancing attack to anticipate Americans from accepting high. Then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney declared in 1989, "The apprehension and countering of the production, trafficking and use of actionable drugs is a top antecedence civic aegis mission of the Administration of Defense."

The botheration with this assortment of calm policing with aggressive operations is that the two institutions accept starkly altered missions. The military's job is to abate a adopted enemy. Cops are answerable with befitting the peace, and with attention the built-in rights of American citizens and residents. It's alarming to conflate the two. As aloft Reagan administering official Lawrence Korb already put it, "Soldiers are accomplished to vaporize, not Mirandize." That acumen is why the U.S. anesthetized the Posse Comitatus Act added than 130 years ago, a law that absolutely forbids the use of aggressive troops in calm policing.
Over the endure several decades Congress and administrations from both parties accept affiliated to carve holes in that law, or at atomic accretion means about it, mostly in the name of the biologic war. And while the behavior acclaimed aloft accustomed new means to absorb the aggressive in calm policing, the abundant added boundless and ambiguous trend has been to accomplish our calm badge departments added like the military.

The capital culprit was a 1994 law acceding the Pentagon to accord surplus aggressive accessories to bounded badge departments. In the 17 years since, in fact millions of pieces of accessories advised for use on a adopted battlefield accept been handed over for use on U.S. streets, adjoin U.S. citizens. Addition law anesthetized in 1997 added automated the process. As Civic Journal appear in 2000, in the aboriginal three years afterwards the 1994 law alone, the Pentagon broadcast 3,800 M-16s, 2,185 M-14s, 73 armament launchers, and 112 armored cadre carriers to noncombatant badge agencies above America. Calm badge agencies aswell got bayonets, tanks, helicopters and even airplanes.


All of that accessories again facilitated a affecting acceleration in the amount and use of paramilitary badge units, added frequently accepted as SWAT teams. Peter Kraska, a criminologist at the University of Eastern Kentucky, has been belief this trend aback the aboriginal 1980s. Kraska begin that by 1997, 90 percent of cities with populations of 50,000 or added had at atomic one SWAT team, alert as abounding as in the mid-1980s. The amount of towns with populations amid 25,000 and 50,000 with a SWAT aggregation added 157 percent amid 1985 and 1996.

As the amount of SWAT teams multiplied, their use broadcast as well. Until the 1980s, SWAT teams were acclimated about abandoned to defuse actual threats to the accessible safety, contest like earnest takings, accumulation shootings, able fugitives, or coffer robberies. The admeasurement of SWAT teams that began in the 1980s, forth with incentives like federal anti-drug grants and asset damage policies, fabricated it advantageous to use them for biologic policing. According to Kraska, by the aboriginal 1980s there were 3,000 anniversary SWAT deployments, by 1996 there were 30,000 and by 2001 there were 40,000. The boilerplate badge administration deployed its SWAT aggregation about already a ages in the aboriginal 1980s. By 1995, it was seven times a month. Kraska begin that 75 to80 percent of those deployments were to serve seek warrants in biologic investigations.
TERROR ATTACKS BRING NEW ROUND OF MILITARIZATION
The September 11 attacks provided a new and acutely burning absolution for added militarization of America's badge departments: the charge to assure the country from terrorism.

Within months of the attacks on the Pentagon and Apple Trade Center, the Office of Civic Biologic Control Action began laying the background with a alternation of ads (featured a lot of noticeably during the 2002 Super Bowl) attached recreational biologic use to abutment for terrorism. Agitation became the new acumen to arm American cops as if they were soldiers, but biologic offenders would still be their primary targets.

In 2004, for example, law administration admiral in the New York counties of Oswego and Cayuga dedicated their new SWAT teams as a all-important anticipation in a post–September 11 world. “We’re in a new era, a new time," here,” one sheriff told the Syracuse Post Standard. “The bad guys are a little altered than they acclimated to be, so we’re just aggravating to accumulate up with the needs for today and achievement we never accept to use it.” The aforementioned sheriff said afterwards in the aforementioned commodity that he'd use his new SWAT aggregation “for a lot of added purposes, too ... just a aggregation of added things." In 2002, the seven badge admiral who serve the boondocks of Jasper, Florida - which had all of 2,000 humans and hadn’t had a annihilation in added than a decade - were anniversary accustomed a military-grade M-16 apparatus gun from the Pentagon alteration program, arch one Florida cardboard to run the headline, “Three Stoplights, Seven M-16s.”

In 2006 alone, a Pentagon agent told the Worcester, Massachusetts Telegram & Gazette, the Administration of Defense "distributed cars account $15.4 million, aircraft account $8.9 million, boats account $6.7 million, weapons account $1 actor and 'other' items account $110.6 million" to bounded badge agencies.
In 2007, Clayton County, Georgia -- whose sheriff already complained that the biologic war was getting fought like Vietnam, and should instead be fought added like the D-Day aggression at Normandy - got its own catchbasin through the Pentagon's alteration program. Nearby Cobb County got its catchbasin in 2008. In Richland County, South Carolina, Sheriff Leon Lott acquired an M113A1 armored cadre carrier in 2008.

The car moves on tank-like tracks, and appearance a belt-fed, turreted apparatus gun that fires .50-caliber rounds, a blazon of armament so able that even the aggressive has restrictions on how it's acclimated on the battlefield. Lott called his car "The Peacemaker." (Lott, is currently getting sued for sending his SWAT aggregation abolition into the homes of humans who appeared in the aforementioned abominable photo that depicted Olympic gold-medalist swimmer Michael Phelps smoker pot in Richland County.) Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio aswell has a belt-fed .50-caliber apparatus gun, admitting it isn't affiliated to his armored cadre carrier.

After 9/11, badge departments in some cities, including Washington, D.C., aswell switched to action dress uniforms (BDUs) instead the acceptable badge uniform. Critics says even attenuate changes like a added militarized compatible can change both accessible acumen of the badge and how badge see their own role in the community. One such critic, retired badge baker Bill Donelly, wrote in a letter to the editor of the Washington Post, "One tends to bandy attention to the wind if cutting ‘commando-chic’ regalia, a bulletproof belong with the chat ‘POLICE’ emblazoned on both sides, and if one is armed with top tech weaponry."

Departments in places like Indianapolis and some Chicago suburbs aswell began accepting apparatus accoutrements from the aggressive in the name of angry terror. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick in fact abeyant the Pentagon affairs in his accompaniment afterwards the Boston Globe appear that added than 80 badge departments above the accompaniment had acquired added than 1,000 pieces of aggressive equipment. "Police in Wellfleet, a association accepted for beauteous beaches and delicious oysters, denticulate three aggressive advance rifles," the Globe reported. "At Salem Accompaniment College, area contempo badge calls accept included apocryphal blaze alarms and a dupe adrift the campus, academy badge got two M-16s. In West Springfield, badge acquired even added able weaponry: two military-issue M-79 armament launchers."

September 11 aswell brought a new antecedent of allotment for military-grade accessories in the Administration of Citizenry Security. In contempo years, the bureau has accustomed anti-terrorism grants to badge agencies above the country to acquirement armored cadre carriers, including such absurd agitation targets as Winnebago County, Wisconsin; Longview, Texas; Tuscaloosa County, Alabama; Canyon County, Idaho; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Adrian, Michigan; and Chattanooga, Tennessee. If the Memphis suburb of Germantown, Tennessee -- which claims to be one of the safest cities in the country -- got its APC in 2006, its sheriff told the bounded cardboard that the accretion would put the boondocks at the "forefront" of citizenry aegis preparedness.

In Eau Clare County, Wisconsin, government admiral told the Leader Telegram that the county's new APC would abate "the blackmail of weapons or atomic devices." County lath affiliate Sue Miller added, "It’s nice, but I achievement we never accept to use it." But afterwards in the aforementioned article, Badge Arch Jerry Matysik says he planned to use the car for added purposes, including "drug searches." It may not be necessary, Matysik said, "But because it’s available, we’ll apparently use it just to be cautious."
The DHS grants are about acclimated to acquirement the Lenco Bearcat, a adapted armored cadre carrier that sells for $200,000 to $300,000. The car has become something of a cachet attribute in some badge departments, who generally put out columnist releases with photos of the purchase, forth with assuming badge admiral clad in appearance or action dress uniforms.

HuffPost beatific a Freedom of Advice Act appeal to the Administration of Citizenry Aegis allurement just how abounding grants for the cars accept been accustomed out aback September 11, how abundant aborigine money has been spent on them, and which badge agencies accept accustomed them. Senior FOIA Affairs Specialist Angela Washington said that this advice isn't available.

The post-September 11 era has aswell apparent the role of SWAT teams and paramilitary badge units aggrandize to accomplish irenic crimes above even the biologic war. SWAT teams accept been acclimated to breach up adjacency poker games, beatific into confined and fraternities doubtable of acceptance arrears drinking, and even to accomplish booze and anatomic licensing regulations. Earlier this year, the Administration of Education beatific its SWAT aggregation to the home of anyone doubtable of ambidexterity the federal apprentice accommodation program.

Kraska estimates the absolute amount of SWAT deployments per year in the U.S. may now top 60,000, or added than 160 per day. In 2008, the Maryland assembly anesthetized a law acute every badge administration in the accompaniment to affair a bi-annual address on how it uses its SWAT teams. The bill was anesthetized in acknowledgment to the mistaken and agitated SWAT arrest on the home of Berwyn Heights, Maryland ambassador Cheye Calvo, during which a SWAT aggregation attempt and dead his two atramentous labs. The aboriginal letters showed an boilerplate of 4.5 SWAT raids per day in that accompaniment alone.


Critics like Joseph McNamara, who served as a badge arch in both San Jose, California, and Kansas City, Missouri, anguish that this trend, now apprenticed by the war on alarm in accession to the war on drugs, accept acquired badge to lose afterimage of their role as keepers of the peace.

"Simply put, the badge ability in our country has changed," McNamara wrote in a 2006 commodity for the Wall Street Journal. "An accent on 'officer safety' and paramilitary training pervades today's policing, in adverse to the earlier culture, which captivated that cops didn't shoot until they were about to be attempt or stabbed." Noting the ample firepower badge now carry, McNamara added, "Concern about such firepower in densely busy areas hitting innocent citizens has accustomed way to an attitude that the badge are angry a war adjoin drugs and abomination and have to be heavily armed."

In 2009, bang spending became addition way to armamentarium militarization, with badge departments requesting federal banknote for armored vehicles, SWAT armor, apparatus guns, surveillance drones, helicopters, and all address of added appropriate accessory and equipment.

Like McNamara, aloft Seattle Badge Arch Norm Stamper finds all of this troubling. "We bare bounded badge to play a legitimate, continuing role in furthering citizenry aegis aback in 2001," says Stamper, now a affiliate of Law Administration Adjoin Prohibition. "After all, the 9/11 agitator attacks took abode on specific badge beats in specific badge precincts. Instead, we got a 10-year attack of accretion militarization, constitution-abusing tactics, causeless abandon and affliction as the badge acclimated federal funds, equipment, and training to access up the biologic war. It's just tragic."

The reason why the 19 suicide hijackers attacked New York and Washington

We Americans become like the corrupt Hapsburg Authority which was said to acquire abandoned annihilation and abstruse nothing.


Watching 9/11 commemorations, which acquire by now become an anniversary religious-political event, reminds us of this old adage.

One of the better tragedies aural the tragedy of 9/11 is that the nation has not abstruse the absolute assignment of 9/11 – the acumen why the 19 suicide hijackers attacked New York and Washington.
Before this attack, the hijacker’s ringleaders fabricated bright their ambition was to abuse the United States for application the angelic acreage of Saudi Arabia and for acknowledging Israel’s repression of the Palestinians.

A subtext of the baleful operation was to accomplish America acquaintance some of the adversity and accident it had continued inflicted on the Mideast.
In short, the motive for the advance was absolutely political. But the Bush administering and again Congress were clumsy or afraid to acquire the actuality that America’s Mideast behavior were the could cause of the attacks. The US media cowered from discussing the accurate affidavit for the advance as a third-rail that had to be avoided.

Instead, 9/11 was spun by the White House and a appreciably acclimatized media into an advance on America by crazed Muslim fanatics who hated, as President Bush said, our freedoms, values, adoration and way of life. Islam was to blame.

This bulletin reverberated through the US media and government. Christian and some Jewish fundamentalist groups amplified the affair that Islam is a menace. Pundits opined that Islam was inherently and alarmingly flawed, a adoration that preached abandon and approved apple domination.

The ashen proclamations of Osama bin Laden served as a convenient, altogether timed affidavit of the abhorrence and crisis of Islam. His tiny alignment of no added than 300 men, as this biographer saw firsthand, had been adherent to angry the Afghan Communists, al of a sudden morphed into a bitter crisis for the United States.

Al-Qaida was awfully abstract into a common menace. Housewives in Peoria, Illinois, voted for George Bush because they feared Osama bin Laden was about to appear and snatch abroad their children. Paranoia absorbed the United States and fabricated it do abhorrent things that abandoned its own laws, belief and values.
Muslims beneath our mattress replaced the old bogeyman of the 1950’s, reds beneath our beds.
When Bush declared a "crusade" adjoin terrorism, he absolutely meant it. Like all crusades, this evidently religious mission bound became a clutter for boodle – in this case, Iraq’s all-inclusive troves of oil and gas.
Thanks to Washington’s anti-Islamic circuit over 9/11, Americans were able to abrupt themselves in angelic animus and victimhood, chargeless of any annoying questions that their behavior in the Muslim apple may acquire contributed to the 9/11 attacks.

The British acclimated to alarm such attacks, "the amount of empire." But Americans were artlessly not acquainted their nation had an empire. This biographer calls it the "American Raj."
Blaming biased Muslims for 9/11 may acquire been a appropriate success for the Bush White House. But in the best run, laying off the accusation on Islam has accepted strategically adverse for the US and just as backbiting as blaming Apple War II on Christianity.


Poll afterwards poll is now assuming that a majority in Muslim nations, even alleged "moderate" ones like Egypt, Indonesia and Morocco, afield accept the US is out to abort Islam.

The blaze and brimstone anti-Muslim abhorrence fulminations of mountebanks like Rev. Hagee, Newt Gingrich, Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh are amplified at abounding aggregate beyond the Muslim world.

Pakistanis now attention the United States as their nation’s arch enemy. Old foe India has collapsed into additional place. Anti-Americanism is now angry beyond the Muslim world. The next access will appear in long-repressed Egypt.

Washington has collapsed into Osama bin Laden’s endure and centermost trap. First, two wars that acquire so far amount up to $4 abundance and bags of US aggressive casualties. Next, the abrasive of the US abridgement by adventuresome arrears spending on the aggressive and intelligence. Beneath Bush, and now Obama, the delinquent arrears has accomplished an alarming $1.4 trillion.

Finally, the alleged "war on terror," that has becoming America the afire abhorrence of abundant of the Muslim world.