How the Secret Service protects Bush from free speech

[P. Kerim Friedman]

Below is an article from the San Francisco Chronicle documenting  
changes in the rights of American's to express dissenting views in  
public. It is useful to read the article in the context of this post:

<http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/ 
2003_10_19_dneiwert_archive.html#106704010346083053>

Which explains the history of the use of "free speech zones" in  
America, and traces them back to the Nixon era. Interestingly, I  
personally first heard of "free speech zones" in the context of  
Singapore, where it was taken as a sign of a thaw in a regime that had  
previously arrested people for expressing any dissent whatsoever.

Apologies for cross-posting, but I felt this issue important enough to  
warrant wide distribution. (To reduce SPAM, please remove my e-mail  
address if you forward this message on to others. Thanks!)

- kerim

-----------------------

Quarantining dissent
How the Secret Service protects Bush from free speech
James Bovard
Sunday, January 4, 2004

URL:  
sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/01/04/ 
INGPQ40MB81.DTL

When President Bush travels around the United States, the Secret  
Service visits the location ahead of time and orders local police to  
set up "free speech zones" or "protest zones," where people opposed to  
Bush policies (and sometimes sign-carrying supporters) are quarantined.  
These zones routinely succeed in keeping protesters out of presidential  
sight and outside the view of media covering the event.

When Bush went to the Pittsburgh area on Labor Day 2002, 65-year-old  
retired steel worker Bill Neel was there to greet him with a sign  
proclaiming, "The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so  
many of us."

The local police, at the Secret Service's behest, set up a "designated  
free-speech zone" on a baseball field surrounded by a chain-link fence  
a third of a mile from the location of Bush's speech.

The police cleared the path of the motorcade of all critical signs, but  
folks with pro-Bush signs were permitted to line the president's path.  
Neel refused to go to the designated area and was arrested for  
disorderly conduct; the police also confiscated his sign.

Neel later commented, "As far as I'm concerned, the whole country is a  
free-speech zone. If the Bush administration has its way, anyone who  
criticizes them will be out of sight and out of mind."

At Neel's trial, police Detective John Ianachione testified that the  
Secret Service told local police to confine "people that were there  
making a statement pretty much against the president and his views" in  
a so-called free- speech area.

Paul Wolf, one of the top officials in the Allegheny County Police  
Department, told Salon that the Secret Service "come in and do a site  
survey, and say, 'Here's a place where the people can be, and we'd like  
to have any protesters put in a place that is able to be secured.' "

Pennsylvania District Judge Shirley Rowe Trkula threw out the  
disorderly conduct charge against Neel, declaring, "I believe this is  
America. Whatever happened to 'I don't agree with you, but I'll defend  
to the death your right to say it'?"

Similar suppressions have occurred during Bush visits to Florida. A  
recent St. Petersburg Times editorial noted, "At a Bush rally at  
Legends Field in 2001, three demonstrators -- two of whom were  
grandmothers -- were arrested for holding up small handwritten protest  
signs outside the designated zone. And last year, seven protesters were  
arrested when Bush came to a rally at the USF Sun Dome. They had  
refused to be cordoned off into a protest zone hundreds of yards from  
the entrance to the Dome."

One of the arrested protesters was a 62-year-old man holding up a sign,  
"War is good business. Invest your sons." The seven were charged with  
trespassing, "obstructing without violence and disorderly conduct."

Police have repressed protesters during several Bush visits to the St.  
Louis area as well. When Bush visited on Jan. 22, 150 people carrying  
signs were shunted far away from the main action and effectively  
quarantined.

Denise Lieberman of the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern  
Missouri commented, "No one could see them from the street. In  
addition, the media were not allowed to talk to them. The police would  
not allow any media inside the protest area and wouldn't allow any of  
the protesters out of the protest zone to talk to the media."

When Bush stopped by a Boeing plant to talk to workers, Christine Mains  
and her 5-year-old daughter disobeyed orders to move to a small protest  
area far from the action. Police arrested Mains and took her and her  
crying daughter away in separate squad cars.

The Justice Department is now prosecuting Brett Bursey, who was  
arrested for holding a "No War for Oil" sign at a Bush visit to  
Columbia, S.C. Local police, acting under Secret Service orders,  
established a "free-speech zone" half a mile from where Bush would  
speak. Bursey was standing amid hundreds of people carrying signs  
praising the president. Police told Bursey to remove himself to the  
"free-speech zone."

Bursey refused and was arrested. Bursey said that he asked the police  
officer if "it was the content of my sign, and he said, 'Yes, sir, it's  
the content of your sign that's the problem.' " Bursey stated that he  
had already moved 200 yards from where Bush was supposed to speak.  
Bursey later complained, "The problem was, the restricted area kept  
moving. It was wherever I happened to be standing."

Bursey was charged with trespassing. Five months later, the charge was  
dropped because South Carolina law prohibits arresting people for  
trespassing on public property. But the Justice Department -- in the  
person of U.S. Attorney Strom Thurmond Jr. -- quickly jumped in,  
charging Bursey with violating a rarely enforced federal law regarding  
"entering a restricted area around the president of the United States."

If convicted, Bursey faces a six-month trip up the river and a $5,000  
fine. Federal Magistrate Bristow Marchant denied Bursey's request for a  
jury trial because his violation is categorized as a petty offense.  
Some observers believe that the feds are seeking to set a precedent in  
a conservative state such as South Carolina that could then be used  
against protesters nationwide.

Bursey's trial took place on Nov. 12 and 13. His lawyers sought the  
Secret Service documents they believed would lay out the official  
policies on restricting critical speech at presidential visits. The  
Bush administration sought to block all access to the documents, but  
Marchant ruled that the lawyers could have limited access.

Bursey sought to subpoena Attorney General John Ashcroft and  
presidential adviser Karl Rove to testify. Bursey lawyer Lewis Pitts  
declared, "We intend to find out from Mr. Ashcroft why and how the  
decision to prosecute Mr. Bursey was reached." The magistrate refused,  
however, to enforce the subpoenas. Secret Service agent Holly Abel  
testified at the trial that Bursey was told to move to the "free-speech  
zone" but refused to cooperate.

The feds have offered some bizarre rationales for hog-tying protesters.  
Secret Service agent Brian Marr explained to National Public Radio,  
"These individuals may be so involved with trying to shout their  
support or nonsupport that inadvertently they may walk out into the  
motorcade route and be injured. And that is really the reason why we  
set these places up, so we can make sure that they have the right of  
free speech, but, two, we want to be sure that they are able to go home  
at the end of the evening and not be injured in any way." Except for  
having their constitutional rights shredded.

The ACLU, along with several other organizations, is suing the Secret  
Service for what it charges is a pattern and practice of suppressing  
protesters at Bush events in Arizona, California, Connecticut,  
Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, Texas and elsewhere. The ACLU's  
Witold Walczak said of the protesters, "The individuals we are talking  
about didn't pose a security threat; they posed a political threat."

The Secret Service is duty-bound to protect the president. But it is  
ludicrous to presume that would-be terrorists are lunkheaded enough to  
carry anti-Bush signs when carrying pro-Bush signs would give them much  
closer access. And even a policy of removing all people carrying signs  
-- as has happened in some demonstrations -- is pointless because  
potential attackers would simply avoid carrying signs. Assuming that  
terrorists are as unimaginative and predictable as the average federal  
bureaucrat is not a recipe for presidential longevity.

The Bush administration's anti-protester bias proved embarrassing for  
two American allies with long traditions of raucous free speech,  
resulting in some of the most repressive restrictions in memory in free  
countries.

When Bush visited Australia in October, Sydney Morning Herald columnist  
Mark Riley observed, "The basic right of freedom of speech will adopt a  
new interpretation during the Canberra visits this week by George Bush  
and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao. Protesters will be free to  
speak as much as they like just as long as they can't be heard."

Demonstrators were shunted to an area away from the Federal Parliament  
building and prohibited from using any public address system in the  
area.

For Bush's recent visit to London, the White House demanded that  
British police ban all protest marches, close down the center of the  
city and impose a "virtual three-day shutdown of central London in a  
bid to foil disruption of the visit by anti-war protesters," according  
to Britain's Evening Standard. But instead of a "free-speech zone," the  
Bush administration demanded an "exclusion zone" to protect Bush from  
protesters' messages.

Such unprecedented restrictions did not inhibit Bush from portraying  
himself as a champion of freedom during his visit. In a speech at  
Whitehall on Nov. 19, Bush hyped the "forward strategy of freedom" and  
declared, "We seek the advance of freedom and the peace that freedom  
brings."

Attempts to suppress protesters become more disturbing in light of the  
Homeland Security Department's recommendation that local police  
departments view critics of the war on terrorism as potential  
terrorists. In a May terrorist advisory, the Homeland Security  
Department warned local law enforcement agencies to keep an eye on  
anyone who "expressed dislike of attitudes and decisions of the U.S.  
government." If police vigorously followed this advice, millions of  
Americans could be added to the official lists of suspected terrorists.

Protesters have claimed that police have assaulted them during  
demonstrations in New York, Washington and elsewhere.

One of the most violent government responses to an antiwar protest  
occurred when local police and the federally funded California  
Anti-Terrorism Task Force fired rubber bullets and tear gas at peaceful  
protesters and innocent bystanders at the Port of Oakland, injuring a  
number of people.

When the police attack sparked a geyser of media criticism, Mike van  
Winkle, the spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information  
Center told the Oakland Tribune, "You can make an easy kind of a link  
that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause  
that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have  
terrorism at that protest. You can almost argue that a protest against  
that is a terrorist act."

Van Winkle justified classifying protesters as terrorists: "I've heard  
terrorism described as anything that is violent or has an economic  
impact, and shutting down a port certainly would have some economic  
impact. Terrorism isn't just bombs going off and killing people."

Such aggressive tactics become more ominous in the light of the Bush  
administration's advocacy, in its Patriot II draft legislation, of  
nullifying all judicial consent decrees restricting state and local  
police from spying on those groups who may oppose government policies.

On May 30, 2002, Ashcroft effectively abolished restrictions on FBI  
surveillance of Americans' everyday lives first imposed in 1976. One  
FBI internal newsletter encouraged FBI agents to conduct more  
interviews with antiwar activists "for plenty of reasons, chief of  
which it will enhance the paranoia endemic in such circles and will  
further service to get the point across that there is an FBI agent  
behind every mailbox."

The FBI took a shotgun approach toward protesters partly because of the  
FBI's "belief that dissident speech and association should be prevented  
because they were incipient steps toward the possible ultimate  
commission of act which might be criminal," according to a Senate  
report.

On Nov. 23 news broke that the FBI is actively conducting surveillance  
of antiwar demonstrators, supposedly to "blunt potential violence by  
extremist elements," according to a Reuters interview with a federal  
law enforcement official.

Given the FBI's expansive definition of "potential violence" in the  
past, this is a net that could catch almost any group or individual who  
falls into official disfavor.

James Bovard is the author of "Terrorism & Tyranny: Trampling Freedom,  
Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil." This article is adapted  
from one that appeared in the Dec. 15 issue of the American  
Conservative.

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle