O
n
the afternoon of January 24, 2002, approximately 25 federal agents,
guns in hand, stormed the home of Sherman Austin, a Sherman Oaks,
California activist who founded www.raisethefist. com, an online
site that hosted many political activists’ websites. The federal
agents, who had been monitoring Austin’s Internet activities
for several months, seized his computers and other personal belongings,
including anti-war and anti-globalization literature.
“They
showed me a search warrant and I just glanced at it. They searched
all the rooms in the house. They knew where my room was. They went
back there, looked at all the computers, asked me to come in and
tell them what all the computers were for specifically so they knew
how to dismantle the network I had been running,” Austin recalled.
“They searched the garage, pretty much everywhere with their
guns still out and drawn.”
When
the agents later left Austin’s home, his room had been ransacked,
but they failed to charge him with a crime. Austin, bewildered by
the search, still planned on driving to New York City to protest
the World Economic Forum in early February 2002.
On
arriving in New York, Austin was quickly apprehended by city police.
“While I was in jail, they handcuffed me and took me to a backroom
where a detective from the FBI and a Secret Service agent interrogated
me for about three or four hours,” Austin said. “During
this whole time, I kept noticing more and more FBI agents walking
in and out of the room. They asked me stupid questions like whether
I was a terrorist or involved in any terrorist organizations. I
told them, ‘No,’ and one of the agents looked at me like
I was seriously a terrorist and that I was lying to him.”
So
what was the charge?
“They
said I was being arrested for distribution of information related
to explosives over the Internet.… [My] site [was linked] to
another site, which wasn’t affiliated with raisethefist.com,
but which was hosted on the same server because I gave hosting space
to different people who wanted some free hosting. I just provided
the link to that site. It was called the
Reclaim Guide
.
It was just a general protest guide that went over security culture
and stuff like that. A small portion of that guide dealt with explosives
information. This information was just pathetic compared to the
type of stuff you could find in any library or any other website.
There’s so much detailed information out there on explosives
and how to use and build explosives that you can find on the Internet.
If someone wanted to use explosives for illegal purposes, I don’t
think they would rely on raisethefist.com to get their information.
“There’s
something on the Internet called the
White Resistance Manual
.
It’s pretty much for white supremacists…to carry out a
large-scale guerilla campaign through means of assassination, threats,
obtaining funds through fraud, everything from firearms to explosives.
I’ve seen, not surprisingly, no action taken against those
people, but here I am, an anarchist website, not even close to what
that is, not even close to what else you can find on the Internet.
“While
they were at my house, interrogating me, they asked me about seven
times if I authored the
Reclaim Guide
. I told them
seven times I didn’t author it. In the arrest warrant, it says
that I told them I authored the
Reclaim Guide
. It’s
funny how they try to slip it by and build a whole fraudulent case
against you with things that you didn’t do.”
Austin
was later sentenced for “distribution” of information
about making or using explosives with the “intent” that
such information “be used for, or in furtherance of, an activity
that constitutes a Federal crime of violence.” This vaguely
worded crime is banned under 18 USC 842 (p)(2)(A), successfully
pushed through Congress in the late 1990s after years of effort
by Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein. Consequently, Austin received
and spent one year in a federal prison. Although the worst of his
nightmare in the judicial system is over, Austin will continue to
face new challenges now that he is out of prison.
“It
was such a weird charge because it’s almost like thought crime.
How do you prove that someone has intent? I can go to tons of other
websites that have [information about] explosives—especially
white supremacy websites. We obviously know they have intent because
they’ve used that type of information before against people.
They’re not being prosecuted for it.”
Austin
intended to fight the charges, but eventually pled guilty after
his federal public defender, Ronald Kaye, advised him to do so,
fearing that new “terrorism enhancements” in the federal
sentencing guidelines would earn Austin an extra 20 years in prison.
The severity of the United States Sentencing Commission guidelines,
which was created in the mid-1990s, expanded greatly after passage
of President Clinton’s 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act and the USA PATRIOT Act passed under President Bush
in 2001.
The
1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act was signed into
law following the Oklahoma City bombing on August 19, 1995. It prompted
the worst assaults on civil liberties the United States had seen
in decades. “The act was wide-ranging, dealing with everything
from the making of plastic explosives to trading in nuclear materials,”
writes George- town law professor David Cole and James X. Dempsey
in
Terrorism and the Constitution
.
“Members
of Congress immediately felt tremendous pressure to pass antiterrorism
legislation,” Cole and Dempsey recall. “It did not matter
that the proposals in the President’s initial bill were directed
largely against international terrorism, while the Oklahoma bombing
was the work of homegrown discontents…. Eager to get the bill
on the President’s desk by the April 19 anniversary of the
Oklahoma City bombing, the Senate adopted the conference report
on April 17 in a 91-8 vote. The next day, the House also adopted
the report by a vote of 293-133.” On April 24, President Clinton
signed the Act.
“To
make the death penalty effective,” explains civil liberties
expert Elaine Cassel in
The War on Civil Liberties
,
“meant making it harder to appeal convictions of capital offenses.”
Clinton’s law, says Cassel, also “[made] it a crime to
support even the lawful activities of an organization labeled as
terrorist…[authorized] the FBI to investigate the crime of
‘material support’ for terrorism based solely on activities
protected under the First Amendment…[freezes] assets of any
U.S. citizen or domestic organization believed to be an agent of
a terrorist group, without specifying an ‘agent’…[expanded]
the powers of the secret court…[repealed] the law that barred
the FBI from opening investigations based solely on activities protected
under the First Amendment…[and allowed] the Immigration and
Naturalization Service (now called the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services) to deport citizens (mostly Muslims) upon the order of
INS officials.”
Of
course, these are but a few of the ways in which the Clinton administration
infringed on civil liberties. Speaking of the legacy of these breaches
in the guarantee of civil liberties, Clinton admitted to making
“a number of ill-advised changes in our immigration laws, having
nothing to do with fighting terrorism.”
In
the wake of September 11, it was not surprising that Bush, along
with then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, legislated additional
infringements on civil liberties in the name of patriotism and national
security. Spun as such, the legislation enjoyed overwhelming support—so
much so that Democrat Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, one
of a handful of Democrats who reached across the aisle to confirm
Ashcroft following the tremulous 2000 election, was the only member
of the Senate to vote against the legislation. Many Democrats—including
John Kerry, who voted for Clinton’s 1996 bill and boasted that
he “authored a provision of the PATRIOT Act that added several
money laundering crimes as potential predicate offenses”—co-
authored parts of the PATRIOT Act.
Fast-forward
now to Sherman Austin’s case. In hearings leading up to the
eventual one-year sentence, which was three times the length recommended
by federal prosecutors, federal judge Stephen Wilson made critical
statements about Austin’s political beliefs such as: “Why
should someone at 19, who, arguably, has some mis- guidance on some
geo-political issues, be given a pass?”
Faced
with three years of supervised release and probation, Austin is
now subject to having his computer access monitored and his equipment
inspected with or without prior notification. He is allowed to associate
with activists and political groups—save for those that, in
the words of the probation department, “espouse violence or
physical force as a means of intimidation or achieving economic,
social, or political change.” There is of course one minor
problem: how to determine whether groups that, say, employ civil
disobedience or street protest fall under such language.
Austin’s
troubles, meanwhile, have proven to be quite trying for his family
and loved ones, most notably his mother, who lost her job because
of her son’s ordeal. “It has depleted my finances,”
says Jennifer Martin. “Any money that was donated was used
for organizing—and used for his commissary and visiting him.
This organizing campaign has been extremely expensive and time consuming.
It’s like someone took my life, put the pieces in a bucket,
and scattered them in a 20-acre field.”
Given
the highly questionable circumstances surrounding Austin’s
case, it should come as no surprise that FBI conduct in Austin’s
case came under sharp criticism. Affidavits written for judges to
authorize the FBI raid and Austin’s subsequent arrest one week
later contained many factual errors, including the claim that Austin
authored the bomb-making instructions, which the FBI and federal
prosecutors continued to make even after speaking to the actual
author, a teenage boy from Orange County, California, who confessed
authorship to FBI agents. Agents also enlisted the help of a right-wing
militia member, who, in emails to Austin, unsuccessfully attempted
to provoke him into writing self-incriminating replies.
“I
get this email from him saying that he wants to go with me to the
Olympics to smash capitalism and do all this radical anti-capitalist
stuff,” Austin recalled shortly before he entered prison. “The
first thing I thought when I read that email was [that it had to
be from the] FBI.”
Later,
with the help of grassroots activists, Martin spoke out about her
son’s case at public panels throughout 2003 and 2004. “The
positive thing about this,” she explained, “is that there’s
a passionate community out there that has offered me their undying
support. On a spiritual level, I feel I have evolved tremendously.
I have met some amazing people, especially young people. I really
feel this world has a chance for surviving,” Martin said. “These
kids are good people. They are trying so hard to create change in
our world.”
Joshua Frank
is author of the forthcoming
Left Out!: How Liberals Helped
Reelect George W. Bush
(Common Courage Press). Merlin Chowkwanyun
is a student at Columbia University in New York. He hosts a radio
show on WBAR FM.