Librarians Describe Life Under An FBI Gag Order

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Librarians Describe Life Under An FBI Gag Order

By Luke O'Brien June 24, 2007 2:22:57 PM

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Life in an FBI muzzle is no fun. Two Connecticut librarians on Sunday described what it was like to be slapped with an FBI national security letter and accompanying gag order. It sounded like a spy movie or, gulp, something that happens under a repressive foreign government. Peter Chase and Barbara Bailey, librarians in Plainville, Connecticut, received an NSL to turn over computer records in their library on July 13, 2005. Unlike a suspected thousands of other people around the country, Chase, Bailey and two of their colleagues stood up to the Man and refused to comply, convinced that the feds had no right to intrude on anyone's privacy without a court order (NSLs don't require a judge's approval). That's when things turned ugly.

The four librarians under the gag order weren't allowed to talk to each other by phone. So they e-mailed. Later, they weren't allowed to e-mail.

After the ACLU took on the case and it went to court in Bridgeport, the librarians were not allowed to attend their own hearing. Instead, they had to watch it on closed circuit TV from a locked courtroom in Hartford, 60 miles away. "Our presence in the courtroom was declared a threat to national security," Chase said.

Forced to make information public as the case moved forward, the government resorted to one of its favorite tactics: releasing heavily redacted versions of documents while outing anyone who didn't roll over for Uncle Sam. In this case, they named Chase, despite the fact that he was legally compelled to keep his own identity secret.

Then the phone started ringing. Pesky reporters wanted info. One day, the AP called Chase's house and got his son, Sam, on the phone. When Chase got home, he took one look at his son's face. "I could tell something was very wrong," he said. Sam told him the AP had called saying that Chase was being investigated by the FBI. "What's going on?" Sam asked his father. Chase couldn't tell him. For months, he worried about what his son must have been thinking. As the case moved forward, the librarians had to resort to regular duplicity with co-workers and family -- mysteriously disappearing from work without an explanation, secretly convening in subway stations, dancing around the truth for months. The ACLU even advised Chase to move to a safehouse.

After the Bridgeport court ruled that the librarians constitutional rights had been violated, the government appealed the decision to U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Around the same time, the Congressional spin machine kicked into overdrive. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) wrote an op-ed in USA Today that said:

"Zero. That's the number of substantiated USA Patriot Act civil liberties violations. Extensive congressional oversight found no violations. Six reports by the Justice Department's independent inspector general, who is required to solicit and investigate any allegations of abuse, found no violations."

Once President Bush reauthorized the Patriot Act, the FBI lifted the librarians' gag order. "By withdrawing the gag order before the court had made a decision, they withdrew the case from scrutiny," Chase said. This eliminated the possibility that the NSL provisions would be struck down.

Today, the Connecticut librarians are the only ones who can talk about life with an NSL gag, despite the likelihood that there are hundreds if not thousands of other similar stories out there. "Everyone else who would speak about is subject to a five year prison term," Chase said. The prison term for violating the gag order was added to the reauthorized Patriot Act.

[Felonious Skunk]

SWIM is convinced that the only way to get the Patriot Akt out of Amerika's digestive tract is to put the heads of the perpe-traitors who enacted it--and who now support it--on the ends of pointed sticks.

Unfortunately, there is no other way. They have unleashed a monster that now lives and breathes on its own and the means to legally kill it no longer exist.

And so we are doomed to repeat our violent history because a few men, intoxicated by greed, have finally abused their power to the point where violence is the only solution.

Very dark days ahead.

[grandbaby]

Hold onto your head-stakes, there, Skunky! It's a long way to go before we gotta wheel out the guillotine.

If you look at recent history, the escalation of anti-government & anti-establishment sentiment into violence was one of the factors that sank the New Left in the late 1960s–early 1970s. Once Charlie Manson and Weatherman started slashing their way toward Revolution, public support for the revolutionary vanguard vanished almost completely, stranding more moderate agitators for change without a broad support base. Without that base, no meaningful change was then possible.

The feds actually dispatched agents-provocateurs into the revolutionary underground with drugs and guns, hoping for exactly the results that occurred: as the vanguard got more and more paranoid, their fantasies of violence increased. Weatherman in particular thought that armed revolution was the only alternative to living under the AmeriKKKan hegemonic thumb.

What we need are more ordinary heroes like the abovementioned librarians, and more ordinary people standing up to show their support for those heroes and bringing cases like theirs to broader attention. In this way, just as the House-Un-American Activities Committee was dissolved once its witch-hunt rhetoric was shown to be more un-American than the dissidents it was set up to harass, will the Patriot Act eventually dissipate like a bad dream. It's gonna take fighting, FS, but it's not gonna take guns.

[Nagognog2]

Unknown to many, a city/town can "opt-out" of the Patriot Act and it's provisions. I live in such a city. San Diego is such a city. Many others abound.

Don't just sit there with your thumbs up your arse - act!

[Felonious Skunk]

^^^^ I have to agree with you both. Good thing I'm not in charge...

[SuprSonik]

Originally Posted by Nagognog2

Unknown to many, a city/town can "opt-out" of the Patriot Act and it's provisions. I live in such a city. San Diego is such a city. Many others abound.

Don't just sit there with your thumbs up your arse - act!

Are you sure San Diego is one of them? According to http://www.bordc.org/list.php#CA, San Diego still hasn't passed anything related to the matter, if I understand correctly.

[Police Officer]

Originally Posted by Nagognog2

Unknown to many, a city/town can "opt-out" of the Patriot Act and it's provisions. I live in such a city. San Diego is such a city. Many others abound.

Don't just sit there with your thumbs up your arse - act!

I have done very minimal research on this, but just at a glance I would say that you have been grossly misinformed. Federal law supercedes State law. State law supercedes City law. States can add to, but not take away from, Federal law.

I read the ordinance that Anchorage passed. It reads that the city will oppose all elements of the Patriot Act that the city believes arent legal. So, what does that actually mean? That the city's lawyers will waste millions of Anchorage tax dollars in an unwinnable fight.

We will use Florida as an example. Lets say Florida decided to make a law that said druf trafficing was legal. Does that make it so? Absolutly not, because its against Federal law. All that would actually happen is alot of people would be held in contempt of court, and Florida would lose ALOT of Federal funding.

[Nagognog2]

I read that from the ACLU. I'm quite sure it was San Diego. May have been a misprint, of course. But the point remains: Your city/town can tell the Feds where to go. So unless you like the shiny-black-shoes peering over your shoulder - put a stop to it.