05/11/10 – Will Potter – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
Alright, everybody, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio, and our next guest is Will Potter.
He keeps the website greenisthenewred.com and you might remember we've talked with him before about the CMU, Administrative Communications Management Units of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Welcome back to the show.
Will, how are you?
I'm alright, Scott.
Thanks for having me back.
Well, I appreciate you joining us on the show today.
So tell us, what's new with the Communications Management Units?
Well, the last time we talked, we were discussing these secretive political prisons that operate in Terre Haute, Indiana and Marion, Illinois.
And since then, what's happened is the government has actually publicly acknowledged their existence and proposed to make them permanent.
There's a proposal that they've put forward quietly to make these secretive facilities a permanent Bureau of Prisons infrastructure.
And in this proposal, they outline some of the reasons the government thinks that's necessary.
As part of that, they describe the inmates as terrorism suspects and domestic terrorists and attempt to justify why some of the most restrictive policies in the entire prison system, comparable and sometimes exceeding those at the Supermax in Colorado, are necessary for nonviolent inmates.
Oh, man.
Well, there's so much here.
First of all, let's just talk about a Supermax.
What exactly is a Supermax?
A lot of people have heard that phrase before, but they don't really know what that means.
Right.
The Supermax is the conventional name people use for the prison in Colorado at ADX Florence.
It's known as the most restrictive prison facility in the country, and it is meant for the most violent inmates, people that have had disciplinary problems, violent problems in other prisons, and the mediums are the maximum security prisons, and they're deemed a higher security risk.
Because of that, they have extreme restrictions on communication above and beyond what other inmates have at other facilities, restrictions on how they're transported, how they're kept in lockdown, things like that.
And these communication management units, the inmates there, the prisoners there, aren't anything like those at the Supermax.
They don't have disciplinary histories.
They don't have communications violations.
They're not in there for violent crimes or bombings and things like that.
But the policies at the CMU are comparable to, and in some cases worse than those facilities, than the Supermax.
Right.
Okay.
So that's a very important point.
You know, the one thing I always think of about the Supermax is I saw a thing on the Learning Channel or something one time about how they actually pour the prison cells as one big concrete piece.
There are no seams.
There is no place where the floor meets the wall.
It's just a curve.
It's one solid piece, and they build the prison basically with these modules.
You know, it's none of Tim Robbins, you know, digging through the wall and escaping from these things.
This is like the ultimate panopticon, the budgetless prison system where the feds can just make this thing.
Nobody's ever escaped from a Supermax.
This is where we kept Timothy McVeigh.
This is where we keep Ramzi Youssef and Ted Kaczynski and, you know, the worst private criminals in America.
And now so if that's what that is, so now explain to me how it is that these communications management units that, as you say, are for people accused of much lesser crimes and not even necessarily convicted, right?
This is in a way like sort of a holding jail, too, or what?
How does this compare to a Supermax facility?
Well, you're talking about some of the structural changes that are made at the Supermax that really reflect the threat or the perceived threat of the prisoners that are housed there.
When we look at the communications management units, the threat is more of a political nature.
It's not that these inmates, these prisoners are going to be violent or it's a threat to other inmates due to physical violence or threats to the community because of physical violence.
If you look at the government's paperwork and their actual proposal, they identify these individuals as threats because of the political nature of their crimes.
For example, one of the inmates there now is Daniel McGowan, who was involved in a few arsons in the Pacific Northwest tied to the Earth Liberation Front.
He has had no communications violations, no history of violence.
His crimes didn't harm anyone except for property and profits.
At the CMU, though, his restrictions with his family and friends are severely limited.
He's not allowed any contact visits with his wife or with his family.
As a background, the Bureau of Prisons generally encourages that.
It reduces incidents in the prisons.
It encourages rehabilitation.
It encourages connections and bonds with family.
It's just better for the inmates, for the guards, for the prisoners themselves.
You really start seeing how restrictive these facilities are.
Well, Nat, you say in your article here, do I understand this right, that it's not the judge who decides that you have to go be sent off to one of these prisons, it's just executive branch officials who get to choose?
Part of the reason there are a few lawsuits right now against these facilities, it's not clear who decides.
Now, under the proposal, I'd spelled it out a little bit more, but these facilities have been operating for three years now.
They were opened quietly in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act.
The inmates who are transferred there have no explanation of why they're being sent there.
After they get transferred to one of these secretive prisons, they're given a notice some weeks later that says they're part of a terrorist organization in some fake language on a piece of paper.
They're given no opportunity to appeal it in violation of their due process rights.
And from what I can find out by talking to attorneys and some of the inmates, is that it's not coming from the judge when they're being sentenced.
It's coming from someone within the prison system, by the warden, or potentially, according to these lawsuits, they're trying to find out how high up it goes, who's making these decisions of who to send there.
The Bureau of Prisons' proposal makes clear that the CMUs are intended to keep political prisoners with, quote, inspirational significance from communicating with the communities and social movements of which they are a part.
Now, you know, as I think the URL green is the new red reveals, you're some kind of lefty, and maybe you have sympathies for this Daniel McGowan character, but what about the blind sheik Omar Abdelrahman and, you know, some guys who are tied with Egyptian Islamic Jihad or something?
You don't want them to be able to go on TV and give coded messages to sleeper cells, do you?
Well, that's certainly not even what we're talking about.
We're talking about, you know, going on, you know, Fox and Friends in the morning and spreading hate-filled message to the world and inciting violence and, you know, giving a call to action to people.
It's not about anything like that at all.
What we're seeing with these facilities is singling out people because they're seen as being influential or being especially articulate or communicating with their friends and family and with the social movements they're a part of.
So, for instance, with Daniel McGowan, you know, he's been very outspoken.
He had a website, supportdaniel.org, where people that are interested in the case can find out more about it, they can write letters, they can help raise awareness.
He's been very involved in fighting these communications management units, raising awareness about that.
So what we're seeing is there's no other explanation for why he is in this facility other than as a retaliatory measure.
And that's what should give everybody pause.
I mean, regardless of how you feel about the prisoners who are there or what they're accused of, it's fundamentally unconstitutional and really should make everyone quite concerned to single out specific people just because of their political beliefs.
I mean, we have protections throughout the legal system, or we're supposed to, to give fair treatment to individuals regardless of their politics, regardless of their beliefs and who they're communicating to.
So when you have people in other prisons that are there for physical violence and rape and being involved in other criminal conspiracies, and they're allowed to communicate with people, they're allowed to communicate more freely with their followers, so to speak.
The only reason these individuals are being singled out as nonviolent criminals is because of their politics.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I'm interested in what the courts have already said about this.
I mean, our Constitution's 220 years old, and certainly the rules that determine when prisoners are allowed to talk with family, for example, or whatever, all of these things have been decided by courts at one time or another, regardless of the legislation, right?
I mean, why isn't this all already decided?
Or is it?
And they're currently in violation, but it's just that no judge has found that yet.
Well, what's interesting is, you know, years ago, the Bureau of Prisons floated a proposal that was nearly identical to the Communications Management Unit, and it was met by serious backlash from civil liberties groups, civil rights groups, human rights groups.
And because of that, that proposal was dropped.
Well, what ended up happening was the Bureau of Prisons went ahead and opened these secretive prisons anyway.
They just did it without the required public comment period.
So these things were opened up, they started operating, they put their policies in place, and now what we have is the government's kind of trying to do this on the back end.
They're trying to follow the letter of the law after the law has already been violated.
So now that we have this public comment period and they're trying to make all this official.
So as a roundabout way of answering your question, you know, I certainly believe, and the attorneys involved in these cases, that the letter and the spirit of the law has been violated and continues to be violated by these facilities.
But, you know, you have to follow these proper channels of, one, getting the lawsuit going and exposing what's going on there and bringing some of this to light.
Yeah, now, it says here that they want to make the restrictions on the people housed in these CMUs even more stringent than before.
Right.
Right now you are limited to CMU inmates to four hours of visitation of non-contact visits a month, and they're proposing to limit that to one hour each calendar month at its most extreme.
Also under the proposal, written correspondence might be limited to three pieces of paper once a week and from a single recipient.
On top of that, telephone communication will be even more restricted to a single call a month up to 15 minutes.
Now, it looks like under the proposal that would potentially be at the most extreme, but it's not that far off from what prisoners are dealing with right now in these facilities.
So it really brings up some fundamental human rights questions.
I mean, you're separating prisoners out of general population and putting them in these secretive political prisons that have conditions that rival other policies within the Bureau of Prisons that are not meant to be permanent.
For example, when prisoners are put in a special housing unit or they receive a special administrative measure, it's meant as a temporary kind of retaliation for poor conduct or for something that's happened that's going to get them out of general population.
With these CMUs, people are transferred there.
They have no timeline of when they're going to be moved out, if ever.
But we have some guys there that are facing the prospect of fulfilling the entirety of their sentence in these extremely restrictive facilities without touching family or friends, without being able to hug their kids, and it really begs some fundamental human rights questions.
Yeah, well, it's not like anybody at 60 Minutes or 20-20 cares, but I guess if they did, this would basically prevent them from even the slightest chance of getting a prison interview with this guy McGowan, for example.
Absolutely, and that's part of it as well.
I mean, I've been able to communicate with David McGowan through letters, not as an official interview capacity, just writing back and forth, because I knew him before he was incarcerated.
But now I'm sending all of my communications via certified mail because we've had a lot of issues with him receiving it.
You know, it's not clear what other problems are going on.
He's also studied that incidence of attorney-client privilege communications being opened when they receive them.
So there are a lot of issues going on here that need to be investigated that really should give everybody pause for the kind of abuses that are taking place.
Yeah, and you know, I really don't mean offense to any lefties in the audience, you know, don't get me wrong, but who follows the Earth Liberation Front?
0.0001% of the population of the country?
You have a few of these hippies go and, I don't know, set some SUVs on fire or break some windows or something, and what, our whole society is supposed to be trembling in fear?
Or is it just that the state is really that scared of a few hippies with bricks?
I don't understand.
You know, and I honestly, I go back and forth on that issue constantly.
I'm trying to figure out what is really at play here.
Do government officials truly believe that the level of this, that the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front and the environmental movement are a threat, or if this is purely a political move?
I mean, you also have to put this in the bigger context of this rise in right-wing extremism that's been going on preceding the Obama presidency and certainly accelerating now, you know, with the Hutteri militia.
You have Dax flying a plane into the IRS building, violence against doctors who provide abortions, all things that the animal rights and environmental movement, the Earth Liberation Front have never been a part of.
Right, well, you know, it's funny because actually the next interview is going to be how the persecution of this ridiculous Hutteri militia is really no different than the persecution of these left-wing activists.
Are you next interview this afternoon?
Yeah.
Yeah, coming up next, Jesse Walker wrote a piece at Reason Magazine about what a bunch of nobodies these guys were and how their plot to overthrow the government amounted to sitting around saying, wouldn't it be fun to shoot a cop, which is not a conspiracy and is not a crime.
Not yet.
Well, it really also begs the question of what are the motivations, particularly with going after animal rights and environmental activists, to trump these up as victories in this war on terrorism, you know, Bush's war on terrorism that's become Obama's war on terrorism.
And certainly I think that's part of what's at play here, because by labeling these wide swaths of people as domestic terrorists, you can point to it as a victory when Daniel McGowan's convicted as a terrorist, which he was, and his co-defendants were convicted as terrorists.
It bumps up the numbers and the so-called victories against these amorphous threats.
Sure.
And really no different when they're picking on leftist activists or right-wing Tea Party-ish types or whatever.
It also accomplishes making us, the regular American people, fear each other more than the state.
You know, Barack Obama, yeah, he claims the power to murder any of us that he wants to any time he wants, but he's not as bad as those right-wingers out of power.
Boy, do they scare me.
And vice versa, you know.
People end up, you know, the right-wingers end up fearing, you know, hippies, who ought to be their allies in the fight against the American empire and the federal police state, for example.
People end up fearing, you know, liberal citizens more than the government, at least especially when conservatives are in control of the government, you know.
It just helps to keep us divided among each other, you know.
Oh, those hippies, they're like al-Qaeda.
Oh, those right-wingers, they're like al-Qaeda.
Everybody's a bunch of terrorists except themselves, you know.
Well, I think a common theme throughout so many eras of history is using that kind of a fear and creating either an internal or an external threat to really deflect attention from people in power and from the true threats to civil liberties, to people's rights, to what's going on in the world.
A good example of that is the recent oil spill off the Gulf.
You know, you have some talking heads like Rush Limbaugh started speculating that it was the work of so-called eco-terrorists.
You have others jump on that bandwagon.
Actually, I have an article up on greenestthenewred.com about this, how, you know, that kind of rhetoric just furthers that fear and it also deflects people from the real questions, which are, why don't we have sustainable, safe energy policies?
What are we doing to hold these corporations accountable that are, as part of their pursuit of profit, and the politicians are allowing them to do it?
But when you start speculating and scaremongering like this, it really takes the focus off of the real questions that need to be asked.
Yeah, well, you know, I've got to tell you, I mean, you're asking the right questions.
I don't think there's anything, well, there's, I guess I have a few things at the very top of my list of most important.
Staying out of a war with Russia and preserving the Bill of Rights, at least for the rest of my lifetime, you know, I guess it would probably be nice if, you know, the grandkids get the benefit of the thing, too, if I ever have grandkids.
I have to tell you, I think it's being whittled away pretty fast.
Yeah, but I don't want to ever be in a CMU.
If I ever am locked up, at least I've got to be able to communicate with the outside world, or else, you know, I'll just, they'll find me like Kenny Trinidou in there.
That's a really important point.
I mean, it's important to emphasize to people that when we're talking about things like this, you know, the takeaway message is not, oh, my God, am I going to be locked up in a communications management unit as a terrorist.
That's not what, when people are listening to this on your program, that's not the main concern here, because you're not going to be locked up.
I mean, chances are you're not going to be locked up or arrested as a terrorist or prosecuted as a warrant, and if you are, there's a very, very, very slim chance that you would end up in one of these prisons.
That's not the point, though.
The point is, all of these things, all the things that, you know, we've been talking about in this discussion and that I've talked about on GreenIsTheNewRed.com, it's taking these small steps towards a culture that suddenly we don't recognize as our own anymore.
Right.
It's so far divorced from the things that we value and that we want to be proud of that, you know, you ask this question all of a sudden, well, how did we get here?
Well, and we got there by taking these slow, steady steps and allowing things to take place against people that are so-called, you know, radicals or extremists or convicted prisoners or immigrants in Arizona.
You know, if you allow these things to keep happening against the undesirables and the extremists and the people on the fringe, all of a sudden you wake up in a country that isn't like anything we've wanted to be.
Yeah.
Well, you're absolutely right, man.
I couldn't have said it better myself.
I tried all day.
And, you know, I think the truth is there for everyone to see, no matter what your political opinions are.
Even if you have no political opinions, you're just some guy.
We can all tell, you know, our deputy sheriffs dress up like soldiers and carry soldiers-type weapons and treat us like enemies more and more and more.
And especially with the YouTube the way it is now, every time local cops beat up some guy on video, anywhere in this society, the whole country gets to see it, even if they don't put it on NBC News.
And it's clear now that the training has changed.
I don't know the exact language anymore, but clearly it is not inculcated into these cops that their job is to protect the rights of their suspects at all.
Their job is to use overwhelming force to enforce the law.
They're not even called peace officers at all anymore, not even sarcastically are they called peace officers anymore.
They are law enforcement, whether you've actually created a victim with your behavior or not.
They are here to enforce the law against you.
The change has already come.
We've seen it.
I mean, hell, Waco was really the thing.
When the American people cheered for Waco instead of condemning it, they said, all right, great, that's it.
And they sent every deputy sheriff in the nation to the local military base for training.
And, you know, here we are, you know, 17 years later talking about how did we get here?
You know, and we're going to be asking the same thing in 17 years when we are all in a CMU.
How did we get here?
You know?
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, listen, I really appreciate your time on the show today.
And I really appreciate your efforts on this very important and very unpublicized issue.
The communications management units.
You guys can read all about it at Will Potter's blog, greenisthenewred.com.
Thanks again for your time on the show today.
Appreciate it.
Thanks, Scott.
I appreciate it.
Bye.