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Was Kansas Shooting Avoidable? White Supremacist was Ex-Informant with Criminal Past & Hateful Views
Notorious white supremacist Frazier Glenn Miller has been charged with killing three people at two Jewish community sites in Kansas. Miller, also known as Frazier Glenn Cross, has openly railed against Jews and African Americans for decades. He served three years in prison on weapons charges and an assassination plot, but avoided a longer sentence after testifying against other white supremacists. Miller claims to have been an FBI informant, and the federal government reportedly shielded him in the early 1990s as part of the witness protection program — the possible source of his multiple names. We are joined by two guests who have tracked Miller for years: Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, and broadcaster David Pakman, who interviewed Miller in 2010.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The man accused of killing three people at two Jewish community sites in Kansas made his first court appearance Tuesday by video conference. Frazier Glenn Miller, also known as Frazier Glenn Cross, has been charged with capital murder for killing 14-year-old Reat Underwood and his grandfather, William Corporon, outside a Jewish community center Sunday. He also faces a first-degree murder charge for killing Terri LaManno, who was visiting her mother at a nearby retirement complex.
Miller is a notorious white supremacist who had openly railed against Jews and African Americans for decades. He is the founder and former "grand dragon" of the paramilitary-style Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. In 1986, after forming the White Patriot Party, he was convicted of violating the terms of a court order settling a lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center. He disappeared while out on bond and was later caught with other Klansmen and a stash of weapons. Miller went on to serve three years in prison on weapons charge and for plotting the murder of Morris Dees, the founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center. He reached a deal with federal prosecutors to testify against other white supremacists in a 1988 sedition trial.
This is Frazier Glenn Miller speaking in 1986 at a meeting of far-right leaders. It’s from the documentary Blood in the Face. A warning: This is filled with hateful language.
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER: I’m going down the street marching, and I got my bullhorn out there, and I yell out, "We thought y’all had some niggers down here! Where are they at?" And we got about two more blocks, and I seen where they was at. They were about eight deep on each side of the street. And we marched right in the middle of them, but we didn’t have trouble. They didn’t attack anybody; they just jumped up and down on the street. Have you ever seen monkeys when they get excited, how they jump up and down?
AMY GOODMAN: That was the white supremacist Frazier Glenn Miller speaking in 1986. The Kansas City Star reports the federal government appears to have shielded Miller in the early ’90s as part of the witness protection program, the possible source of his multiple names. Records show Frazier Glenn Cross Jr. received a Social Security number in 1990, the year Miller was released from prison. In his book, A White Man Speaks Out, Miller claims to have been an FBI informant. In 2010, Miller ran for U.S. Senate as a write-in candidate for Missouri. Radio stations aired his virulent ads—with an unusual disclaimer.
2010 RADIO AD: The following is a paid political advertisement and may not be suitable for children, but this station is required to carry it by federal law.
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER: White men have become the biggest cowards ever to walk the Earth. The world has never witnessed such yellow cowards. We’ve set back and allowed the Jews to take over our government, our banks and our media. We’ve allowed tens of millions of foreign mud people to invade our country, steal our jobs and our women, and destroy our children’s future. America is no longer ours. America belongs to the Jews who rule it and to the mud people who multiply in it. The undeniable proof is at DavidDuke.com. It’s time for white men to unite, to join together and to take our country back. This is Glenn Miller, and I approve this message.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Frazier Glenn Miller in a 2010 radio ad. To talk more about him, we’re joined by two guests. In Montgomery, Alabama, Mark Potok is with us, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups and had been following Frazier Glenn Miller for decades. Here in New York, David Pakman is with us. He’s host of The David Pakman Show. He interviewed Frazier Glenn Miller in 2010.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s start with Mark Potok. So, actually, the Southern Poverty Law Center is also at the center of this white supremacist history. Mark, talk about who Frazier is.
MARK POTOK: Well, I would say he was one of the best-known white supremacist activists in the country for a very long time. He has been active for more than 40 years in the movement. He joined as a very young teenager, joined things like the National States’ Rights Party, a descendent of the American Nazi Party, and some other groups, as well. So he was an important player, but, as you mentioned, he testified in a sedition trial in 1988 in Fort Smith, Arkansas, against most of his comrades, some 13 leaders of the white supremacist movement. That very much put him, of course, on the outs. He was seen as a snitch, derided very widely. He’s been banned right up to this day on certain racist web forums.
So there are, I think, mixed feelings in the movement about him. He has, in some ways, worked his way back into the good graces of his former fellows, in the sense that he’s written an autobiography describing himself as an aggrieved white man. This was back in 2002. Since 2005, he has been publishing a newspaper called The Aryan Alternative. So, there are mixed feelings about him out there on the scene. It is even conceivable that Miller engaged in this mass murder, if in fact he is proven to have done so, as a way of showing that he really wasn’t a snitch, he was really in it for real.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to play part of an interview with Heidi Beirich, head of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, that she did with Frazier Glenn Miller just months ago in the fall of 2013.
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER: Whites are in fact dying out. Jews are increasing.
HEIDI BEIRICH: God, Glenn, you and your crazy numbers. You know, whites are not dying out.
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER: Well, it is all a matter of goddamn simple arithmetic. You refuse to recognize.
HEIDI BEIRICH: Well, for you, it’s a matter of really stupid, simple argumentation.
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER: I wouldn’t even be in the movement if not for that.
HEIDI BEIRICH: Well, then, you shouldn’t—you—
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER: We went from—we went from 90—90 percent. When I was 25 years old, the United States was 90 percent white.
HEIDI BEIRICH: Yet that doesn’t mean whites are being exterminated. There’s just other people here.
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER: Everything that’s killing us was brought about by Jews.
HEIDI BEIRICH: Killing us? Killing us?
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER: Legalization—the legalization of abortion that has already killed, what, 40 million white babies in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Frazier Glenn Miller. He went on to praise Joseph Paul Franklin, a serial killer who was executed last year for the sniper killing of a man outside a synagogue in 1997. He killed a number of other people, including an interracial couple and two black teenage boys, and firebombed a synagogue. And he famously tried to kill Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt and civil rights activist Vernon Jordan Jr. This is what Frazier Glenn Miller said about Franklin just months ago.
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER: You know they’re going to kill him November 20th.
HEIDI BEIRICH: Yeah. What he did was pretty, pretty heinous, you have to admit. He was gunning people down.
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER: Well, he did have a rationale for it.
HEIDI BEIRICH: A rationale?
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER: I mean, it wasn’t—it wasn’t unreasonable—
HEIDI BEIRICH: Yeah.
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER: It wasn’t unreasonable in his mind. He thought he was doing the right thing.
HEIDI BEIRICH: Yeah, but that’s what all murderers have, some kind of rationale.
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER: And he’s a vigilante. A righteous vigilante is what I would call him.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Frazier Glenn Miller just months ago talking about Joseph Paul Franklin, who was executed last year for the killing spree that he went on. Mark Potok, also the center, your center, the Southern Poverty Law Center, talk about the plot against the founder, Morris Dees.
MARK POTOK: Well, Miller saw Morris as his mortal enemy. At that point, Morris and the center were becoming well known. We were just starting our first major lawsuits against Klan groups. The first one was against the United Klans of America, based here in Alabama. And so, you know, this idea was going around that Morris Dees was the absolutely number one enemy of white supremacy in America, and he needed to be taken out. Miller, in fact, created a "point system," quote-unquote, where people like Joseph Paul Franklin would get one point for killing black people, 10 points for killing Jews, 50 points for killing judges and 888 points for killing Morris Dees. So, you know, and I think that reflected more or less the way other people in the white supremacist world saw Morris. You know, at another point, there was another plot which involved scourging Morris. They wanted to tear the skin off his body. So there’s a lot of hatred there. And that’s, of course, one of the reasons why I work in a building that is just surrounded by immense security.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, what actually happened in that case?
MARK POTOK: Well, what happened was that he was initially charged with conspiracy, very serious charges, in 1987, that could have sent him to prison for 20 or 30 years. But he did in fact cut a deal with the federal government and agreed to testify in Fort Smith against his comrades. That wound up meaning a mere five-year sentence for him, and he served only three years. As you’ve noted, the Kansas City paper has now reported that in fact he did change his name legally. It’s clear that he was in the witness protection program. As you said, he wrote about it in his autobiography. And, you know, perhaps if he had been in prison all those years rather than a witness in this trial, which collapsed spectacularly, we wouldn’t have experienced what we saw in Kansas City the other day.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to a clip of our other guest today, David Pakman, interviewing Frazier Glenn Miller in April of 2010 when Miller was running for the U.S. Senate as a write-in candidate for Missouri. David Pakman asked Miller if he personally hated him.
DAVID PAKMAN: Do you personally dislike me? So, like, could we get along even though I’m Jewish and you hate Jews? Like, do you have anything personal against me? Or how does that work?
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER: Yes, I hate all Jews.
DAVID PAKMAN: OK.
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER: And I’ll tell you why. For me to say out of the one corner my mouth that I didn’t hate all Jews and then out of the other corner of my mouth say that Jews caused the deliberate murders of over 300 million of my people during the 20th century alone—
DAVID PAKMAN: Right, OK.
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER: Of course I hate you. And you’ve earned my hate.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s the white supremacist who’s charged in the Kansas killings, talking to David Pakman, who joins us now. David, you exchanged emails with Frazier Glenn Miller just months ago, that interview done in 2010.
DAVID PAKMAN: That’s right. Initially we were in touch because Craig Cobb, another white separatist, who was trying to create a whites-only community in one of the Dakotas, was friends, I guess, of—or that’s at least what they would describe each other—with Glenn Miller. Glenn Miller put me in touch with Cobb and then was trying to insert himself back into my program, asking that I interview him. When I explained that I have nothing against interviewing him in principle, but that there’s really no news or there’s no reason to interview him right now, he kind of resorted to the same anti-Jewish statements and rhetoric.
AMY GOODMAN: So talk about that first interview in 2010.
DAVID PAKMAN: Yeah, the big difference—I interview a lot of extremists—anti-gay extremists, religious extremists, many, many extremists. The one difference with Miller versus all of the others is that the others, while their rhetoric is incredibly discriminatory and hateful against huge groups of people, they’re usually very nice to me, and sometimes they say they want to save me or they want to help me in some way. In their internal logic, that’s what they want to do. As you saw, Miller told me very directly that he hated me. And that was an outlier.
AMY GOODMAN: So, these most—the most recent emails, that he wanted to come on again, was there any indication of what he wanted to say?
DAVID PAKMAN: Well, there—I’ve released these emails. They’re on DavidPakman.com. The full transcript is there, so people can kind of judge for themselves. If I were to speculate a little bit and kind of characterize them, there was a desperation for attention, seemed to be the main priority, just really wanted attention, wanted to be on. When I said, "Well, why would I have you on now?" he said, "Well, I think I’m going to run for something again soon." And I said, "Well, let’s talk at that time."
AMY GOODMAN: One of the emails said, "As you know, your listenership, including the archive, skyrocketed after having me on your show. So don’t say I’m not interesting. Since I’ll be a candidate next year for US Congress, 7th district of MO, you can use that as a reason to have me on."
DAVID PAKMAN: That’s exactly right. And then he also explained—this was kind of a running thing with him, where before the interview in 2010, he said I would never run it, because he would so badly embarrass me. Immediately after the interview—we recorded it earlier in the day before it aired—he said, "You’re not even going to publish that, because I so embarrassed you." Of course, we did publish it, as it’s now been widely disseminated. And that idea continued, that we were scared to have him on.
AMY GOODMAN: During his Senate campaign in 2010, Frazier Glenn Miller was interviewed by Howard Stern on his radio show.
HOWARD STERN: We call Glenn the only honest politician out there, actually. You made the good point yesterday, Robin: At least he doesn’t lie. Hi, Glenn.
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER: Hey, good morning. And good morning to my friends at VNNForum.com. That’s where I hang out. It’s a discussion forum for pro-white people.
ROBIN QUIVERS: I see.
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER: But anybody is invited on, Howard. I’d love to have you come on there and debate me one on one and let everybody decide who’s right and who’s wrong.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Frazier Glenn Miller referring to VNNForum—or Vanguard News Network Forum—dot-com. Mark Potok, can you talk about this site?
MARK POTOK: Well, VNN is essentially the second-largest white supremacist web forum in the country—really, in the world. The largest is one called Stormfront. Miller was actually banned from Stormfront, which is run by a former Alabama Klan leader—and as I said, it’s the largest—because of his informing against other leaders. But what he did, essentially, was land on VNN, where he’s posted close to 13,000 times in recent years.
You know, we have recently completed and will very shortly release a report showing that, for instance—how these forums really help to create killers, or at least nurture killers. We found that at Stormfront, over the last five years, registered members of that forum have been responsible for almost 100 murders. There are also many people who have become murderers who post on VNN. So these are sort of Petri dishes, breeding grounds for people like Glenn Miller. You know, VNN is a particularly vicious site. They use language that you won’t even find on Stormfront that’s rather similar to the clips you played from Glenn Miller. It’s run by a guy named Alex Linder, another old-time neo-Nazi. And, in fact, Linder is the guy who writes The Aryan Alternative that Miller published.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about the Nevada rancher who is declaring victory after hundreds of armed supporters backed his standoff with the federal government. The Bureau of Land Management began seizing Cliven Bundy’s cattle this month, saying he owed more than a million dollars in fees for grazing his cattle on federally controlled land. Bundy refused to comply, saying he doesn’t recognize the federal government. And hundreds of people from right-wing, anti-government and pro-gun groups flocked to his site. Just this past weekend, they shut down Interstate 15, leading to a standoff that ended with the government backing down and releasing the seized cattle. Cliven Bundy appeared on Fox News on Monday.
CLIVEN BUNDY: Listen, do you think they really have taken it over? I don’t think so. Now they might have took over our Clark County sheriff, but they never took over we, the people, the sovereign people of this nation. We’re standing. And we’re going to stand until we take the guns away from those bureaucracies, and then we’ll start making America great one more time.
AMY GOODMAN: Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, can you talk about Cliven Bundy and the wider significance of this standoff in Nevada?
MARK POTOK: Yeah. It was an incredible moment. I mean, look, the bottom line, first of all, is that Cliven Bundy is stealing from the government. He is stealing from you and me. This is a guy who simply refuses to pay over a million dollar in grazing fees that every other person who grazes cattle on public lands in this country must pay. So, you know, that’s the context. It’s hardly about defending the Constitution or anything like that.
It is true that hundreds and hundreds of militiamen and others, members of the very groups you referenced at the very top of the show, have flocked to Bundy’s ranch. I have seen really terrifying pictures, photographs of some of these militia types sitting on a highway overpass with their sniper weapons trained on law enforcement officials. Really, it was a terrifying situation. We had a reporter out there. It seemed obvious that at any moment we could have seen gunfire and, really, blood in the desert. You know, this is the latest iteration, really, of the kinds of conflicts that we’ve seen perenially over the last 15, 20 years with the militia movement—the idea that somehow the government has no right to, you know, impose any kind of law on people, particularly in the West, where there is so much resentment directed at Washington.
AMY GOODMAN: Is this kind of white supremacist, far-right violence increasing, Mark?
MARK POTOK: Well, it has been—it has been increasing, or at least very much up, since Barack Obama came into office. It was in fact rather quiet during the Bush years, between 2000, 2008. But pretty—even before Obama took office, as a matter of fact, immediately after he was inaugurated [nominated] in the summer of 2008 in Denver, we began to see plots, various attempts at domestic terrorism, really proliferate. So, the Glenn Miller murders, or alleged murders, are not unique at all. There are a number of—for instance, in June of 2009, after Obama took office, I’m sure many people will remember another well-known neo-Nazi, James von Brunn, shot and killed a guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington. A couple of years after that, another neo-Nazi—again, fairly well known—tried to bomb a parade with a very powerful IED he built on Martin Luther King Day in Spokane, Washington. Yet a third neo-Nazi invaded a Sikh temple in August of 2012 and murdered six people. And these are only a few examples, but we really have seen quite a number of these. There’s no question that we’re seeing more violence from the domestic, non-Islamic radical right than we are at this point from jihadists.
AMY GOODMAN: And how does the government organize? I mean, number one on the domestic terrorism list, according to a top FBI official, is eco-terrorism, is the animal rights movement. We don’t hear very much about white supremacists except when something horrific like this happens.
MARK POTOK: Well, let me say, the idea that eco-terrorists, so-called, are the major domestic terror threat, which was in fact said to Congress a couple of times by FBI leaders during the Bush years, I think is just patently ludicrous. You know, no one has been killed by anyone in the radical animal rights movement or the radical environmentalist movement. There are certainly groups out there that are involved in things like burning down SUV dealerships and so on, but no one has been killed yet. And that is in just, you know, wild contrast to what we’re seeing from people like Glenn Miller. You know, we’ve also had a real problem with the Department of Homeland Security, in the sense that ever since a particular report on the right wing was leaked to the press in April of 2009, DHS has sort of cowered, in a sense. They essentially gutted their non-Islamic domestic terrorism unit and really have not been putting out very important reports.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain that just very quickly, Mark. Explain that for people who do not remember what happened in 2009.
MARK POTOK: Sure. The report did things like say the extremists are interested in recruiting returning veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq. There was a hue and cry on the right wing, the political right wing of this country, that DHS had characterized all military people, all veterans, as white supremacists and extremists and so on. And that’s not at all what the report said. But Janet Napolitano, then the head of DHS, withdrew the report, apologized, and ultimately the unit fell apart.
AMY GOODMAN: David Pakman, as we wrap up, when you heard who was involved with the killings, who was the shooter in Kansas, your thoughts, having interviewed Miller?
DAVID PAKMAN: Yeah, I heard about it in pieces. First I heard about the shooting. And much later—it was Sunday night—I started getting tens and dozens of tweets from people saying, "The shooter is the guy you interviewed." Of course, the interview was four years ago; it didn’t immediately click. It was Kansas, when I associated Miller with Missouri. Once I figured out what this was, initially I was just shocked, and then realized that this is—this was the guy who spoke to me in one way, and then took what he said and it now became real-world violence, which, of course, was horrifying.
AMY GOODMAN: And to those who say, "Why give him a platform?"
DAVID PAKMAN: Right. Well, if I were giving him a platform in the way that corporate news gives non-science-based climate change ideas an equivalent platform as if there is a 50/50 view, that would be wrong. That’s not what I do. I have an opinion program. I bring these people on. It’s abundantly clear that what I’m doing is exposing their views. And that’s really why. Imagine if we had no video. We had—you know, often we have these crimes, and then people say, "We never heard anything. There’s nothing. We don’t know who this person is." Now we know.
AMY GOODMAN: David Pakman, I want to thank you for being with us, The David Pakman Show. David broadcasts on radio and television, on Free Speech TV, as well. And Mark Potok, the senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, has been tracking Frazier Glenn Miller for years. We’ll link to your reports at democracynow.org.
When we come back, another group of people who have been tracked in New York—Muslims—and what the New York Police Department has announced: the ending of the so-called Demographics Unit that spies on Muslims. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: A cover of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros’ "Home" performed by Jorge and Alexa Narvaez. The Narvaezes, whose cover went viral online with 27 million views, garnering them an appearance on the daytime talk show Ellen, are back in the news this week after ICE arrested and rejected the asylum bid of their mother and grandmother, Esther Alvarado. DREAM activists are calling on the Obama administration to release her. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
Killing Nature's Defenders: Study Finds Global Surge in Murders of Environmental Activists
A new reports finds the killings of environmental and land rights activists worldwide has tripled over the past decade. The group Global Witness documented 147 activists who were killed in 2012, compared to 51 in 2002. The death rate is now an average of two per week. Almost none of the killers have faced charges. We air interviews with some of the late activists featured in the report, including José da Silva, a Brazilian conservationist and environmentalist who campaigned against logging and clearcutting of trees in the Amazon rainforest. In 2011, José and his wife, Maria, were murdered by masked gunmen. "This could be the tip of the iceberg in terms of the scale of the real problem," says Global Witness campaigner Oliver Courtney, who says details about the murders were nearly impossible to locate.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: A new report says the killings of environmental activists defending land rights worldwide has surged over the past decade. The group Global Witness documented 147 activists who were killed in 2012, compared to 51 in 2002. The death rate is now an average of two per week. Brazil was the world’s deadliest country for environmental defenders, with 448 deaths between 2002 and 2013. Honduras was second with 109 deaths over that same, well, little bit more than a decade.
One of the activists featured in the report is José da Silva, a Brazilian conservationist and environmentalist who campaigned against logging and clearcutting of trees in the Amazon rainforest. In 2011, José and his wife Maria were murdered by masked gunmen. José’s ear was ripped out as proof of execution. Before his execution, José da Silvia described the difficulties he and other environmentalists face.
JOSÉ DA SILVA: [translated] It’s a very uneven fight between us environmentalists and the buying power of money. We fight for everything, then someone shows up and throws his money on top of the misery of someone who lives there, and they entice the guy to start destroying the forest. I’m protecting nature, because I live in the middle of it and won’t sell it.
AMY GOODMAN: That was José da Silva, a Brazilian environmentalist who was murdered in 2011 by masked gunmen. In 2012, the United Nations posthumously recognized José and his wife Maria as forest heroes.
For more, we go to London, where we’re joined by Oliver Courtney, senior campaigner with Global Witness and the lead author of their new report, "Deadly Environment: The [Dramatic] Rise [in] Killings of Environmental and Land Defenders."
Oliver Courtney, welcome to Democracy Now! Explain what you have found.
OLIVER COURTNEY: Well, as you’ve said, we found a sharp rise in the number of people getting killed defending their rights to land and the environment, people like José da Silva and his wife. And what we found is, and what’s the most—perhaps the most worrying, is we really feel that this could be just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the scale of the real problem. Information about what’s happening to activists, like we just saw, is very hard to come by and even harder to verify. On the back of that, there seems to be an enormous level of impunity attached to—attached to this problem. So whilst the vast majority of killings, there’s almost nothing known about the perpetrator and who was behind it. And we’ve seen just 1 percent of cases, in our analysis, has seen a conviction, so the person has actually been brought to justice. We think that this kind of level of impunity obviously has a knock-on effect in terms of silencing further dissent. And those who would protect the environment are being killed in ever greater numbers, when really they should be being protected as heroes.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s turn to a clip from the documentary A Fierce Green Fire. We’ll hear from Brazilian rubber tapper, union organizer Chico Mendes, who formed a workers’ union that fought to preserve the rainforest from cattle ranching and logging. This is part of the film that’s narrated by the Chilean novelist Isabel Allende.
CHICO MENDES: [translated] It was only in 1975, when the ranchers arrived, that I joined the union and cut less rubber.
ISABEL ALLENDE: The rubber tappers organized empates, or standoffs, nonviolent protests in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, where they surrounded the trees and tried to explain what a disaster cutting down the forest was for everyone.
AMY GOODMAN: Chico Mendes was assassinated in 1988, a quarter of a century ago. If you could tell me, Oliver Courtney, about the current stories of those who have been killed and who is killing them?
OLIVER COURTNEY: Well, there are many stories, and it’s quite shocking that, actually, 25 years on since the death of Chico Mendes, we’re seeing such a spike in this—in this kind of crime. What we think lies behind and, in our analysis, what we’ve seen lies behind a lot of the killings is the rising competition in natural resources. And it needs to be pointed out that the vast majority of the killings that we’ve come across do involve people who are resisting the operations of companies, and often foreign companies, whether or not they are logging companies, agribusiness companies, carrying out land grabs, mining companies. They’re often ordinary people who are resisting these operations. As I’ve said, it’s very difficult often to pinpoint the exact perpetrator. There’s a very startling low number of convictions. But what we have seen is that they are resisting operations to these companies. And we do feel like it’s down to the companies to make sure that they’re not being associated with this kind of violence, and also that governments need to monitor this problem much more clearly and much more actively and protect those citizens who are facing these threats, ensure that any perpetrators are brought to justice.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to Maria da Silva, she and her husband José murdered in 2011 while fighting to protect the Amazon rainforest from loggers. In this clip, Maria explains the challenges environmentalists face.
MARIA DA SILVA: [translated] The truth is, my friend, the struggle is not easy, because environmentalists are seen as people that hold back progress. That’s what makes it difficult. The most important thing is the courage.
AMY GOODMAN: Oliver Courtney, that—Maria was killed in 2011. Talk about how people are being defended today as they try to defend the Earth.
OLIVER COURTNEY: Well, our analysis is that there is very little protection for those kind of—those kind of activists. Global Witness actually was first prompted to look into this—into this issue in more detail by the killing of a friend and colleague of ours, a man named Chut Wutty,, who was a prominent Cambodian forest activist who was killed by military police in Cambodia whilst investigating illegal logging. To date, his case has been dropped by a provincial court. His family haven’t seen justice. And since he—in the months after he died, another journalist who was investigating illegal logging was found with an ax in his head in the boot of a car, and a young girl who was protesting the forced eviction from her village, a 14-year-old girl, was shot and killed by military police. So there really is very little protection for these people. They are often operating in and protesting in remote and often very risky areas and coming into contact with some very powerful and well-connected vested interests. We really feel it comes down to governments and companies to make sure that this problem is being monitored much better, and that crimes, where they are found, are prosecuted. That would send out a message that protect—those who protect the environment will also be protected.
AMY GOODMAN: Oliver, can you talk about João Luiz Telles Penetra?
OLIVER COURTNEY: Mr. Penetra was one of the most striking cases in our report, because we published our first round of research into this issue shortly before the Rio summit, and we tried to issue a wake-up call to the international community to say that we felt that this problem was increasing and that the threat to environmental activists was increasing, just before the—before delegates gathered to discuss better ways to protect the climate and the environment. Now, Mr. Penetra was an advocate for fishermen’s rights who had been fighting for the rights of local fishermen against the—against the advance of oil operations in the area. And now, the day after the summit ended in Rio, Mr. Penetra was abducted, and he was found executed with another campaigner just a few days later. We really think that sends out a symbol about how much needs to be done. He was one of 18 activists who were murdered in the month after Rio, which shows how far we have to go and how much work needs to be done by governments and the international community to make sure that these people who are laying their lives on the line to protect the environment are getting the protection they deserve.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go out with the voices of these forest heroes. In 2012, the United Nations posthumously recognized Maria and José da Silva as forest heroes, the couple murdered in 2011 while fighting to protect the rainforest. Maria’s sister, Laísa Santos Sampaio, received the award on their behalf. We’ll end with her words.
LAÍSA SANTOS SAMPAIO: [translated] Maria and José Claudio not only defended the forest, but showed by practical example how to live with dignity in the forest, respecting its dynamics and all its species. In living with the forest, they were examples and taught children that one has more to gain keeping the forest alive than selling or burning it.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Laísa Santos Sampaio remembering her sister and brother-in-law, Maria and José da Silva, forest heroes. That does it for our show. Thanks so much to Oliver Courtney. We’ll link to the report, "Deadly Environment," at democracynow.org.
Tonight, I’ll be doing a public interview with the Chilean novelist Isabel Allende—go to our website—here in New York.
New York Drops Police Unit that Spied on Muslims, But Will It End Broader Profiling & Surveillance?
The New York City Police Department is disbanding a controversial spying unit that targeted Muslim communities. The so-called "Demographics Unit" secretly infiltrated Muslim student groups, sent informants into mosques, eavesdropped on conversations in restaurants, barber shops and gyms, and built a vast database of information. But after years of collecting information, it failed to yield a single terrorism investigation or even a single lead. We get reaction from Linda Sarsour of the Arab American Association of New York, who calls the unit’s closure a "welcome first step," but says it will "take years to undo the trauma that the American Muslim community has endured." We are also joined by Matt Apuzzo, who was part of the Associated Press team that first revealed the NYPD’s post-9/11 surveillance program. The AP’s series won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. Apuzzo is co-author of "Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD’s Secret Spying Unit and Bin Laden’s Final Plot Against America."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The New York Police Department says it’s abandoned a secretive program that spied on Muslims. The so-called Demographics Unit dispatched plainclothes detectives into Muslim neighborhoods to eavesdrop on their conversations, and built detailed files on where people ate, prayed and shopped. But after years of collecting information, the police acknowledged it failed to yield a single terrorism investigation or even a single lead.
All of this came after a series of articles by the Associated Press that revealed the extensive domestic surveillance program deployed by the New York Police Department in the wake of 9/11. The series won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. We’re joined by one of the reporters on that team, Matt Apuzzo, who is now here with us in New York. He’s with The New York Times now. He is co-author of Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD’s Secret Syping Unit and Bin Laden’s Final Plot Against America.
Also joining us, Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York and national advocacy director for the National Network for Arab American Communities.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Matt, explain the Demographics Unit.
MATT APUZZO: Sure. So the Demographics Unit was created in 2003, and the idea was the NYPD would send about a dozen plainclothes detectives of South Asian or Arab descent out into Muslim neighborhoods every day to just kind of be—sort of blend into the community and keep their eyes and ears open. So, they would go out to a coffee shop, and one of their first jobs was to gauge sentiment. So you go in, you talk to the guy behind the counter, and you see if you can chat him up a little bit about what he thinks about America, what he thinks about foreign policy, what he thinks about drones. And then you go, and you have your coffee, and you listen. You just listen to the conversations. And some of those conversations end up in police files, conversations like two Pakistani men speaking in Urdu about the State of the Union address and what they thought of the State of the Union.
And all of this stuff goes in files, and it gets organized by ethnicity and ancestry, so you have files on Egyptians, Pakistanis, Palestinians, where people—you can watch cricket, where you can—where people gather to watch soccer. And the idea is, if the NYPD were to ever get, let’s say, a specific tip about an Egyptian terrorist, you know, inside New York City, well, they could pull the Egyptian folder off the shelf, and they’d know everywhere in the city that an Egyptian might rent a room, where he’d buy his coffee, where he’d buy his groceries, where he’d get his hair cut, and that’s where they’d look. And the idea was also to look for hotspots, you know, a place where there was sort of anti-American sentiment, where people were sort of angry over drones or angry over foreign policy, that sort of a anti-American or sort of jihadist sentiment might sort of, you know, bubble up.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, that’s the Demographics Unit.
MATT APUZZO: That’s the Demographics Unit.
AMY GOODMAN: What about those that sent people into mosques? What did they call them? Mosque crawlers?
MATT APUZZO: They’re mosque crawlers. So those were informants. Those were run by a separate unit, the Terrorist Interdiction Unit. Those were units—that’s the unit that designated mosques, entire mosques, as terrorism enterprises and allowed—and if the entire mosque is the terrorism enterprise, then everybody who attends the mosque can be subjected to surveillance. So the—they’ll use license plate readers to collect information on who’s attending mosques and use informants with hidden microphones to audiotape sermons. And these investigations stretch on for years and years. And, of course, no mosque has been charged. I mean, the NYPD developed no information that a mosque was a terrorist organization.
MY GOODMAN: And that was started with the help of the CIA?
MATT APUZZO: The Demographics Unit was actually started with the help of the CIA. It was actually the brainchild of a CIA officer who’s on the payroll of the CIA. And—you know, but they certainly had a hand in starting the Terrorist Interdiction Unit, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Didn’t the New York Police Department take David Cohen from the CIA to be top guy in the New York Police Department?
MATT APUZZO: Right. So, Dave was the top—the head of the Intelligence Division at the NYPD, the top intelligence guy at NYPD, career CIA officer. But, you know—and that’s fine. He was retired. But the interesting part of the relationship is that somebody named Larry Sanchez, who was actually still on the CIA payroll, was working out of NYPD and helped build these programs. An internal CIA investigation, after we wrote our stories for the AP, found no—they didn’t—the CIA didn’t break any laws, but found, you know, there was no legal agreement, there were no rules, there wasn’t—there were no clear guidelines, they left him there too long, he had no supervision. So, I mean, it really just shows, again, we’re talking about a post-9/11 kind of—we rush in, and now I think we’re only now kind of really understanding the breadth of some of these things.
AMY GOODMAN: So they’re saying that the Demographics Unit has been closed. The unit that sent people into the mosques, has that been closed?
MATT APUZZO: No.
AMY GOODMAN: And again, it’s called?
MATT APUZZO: The Terrorism Interdiction Unit. And I think—you know, they may rename. I don’t know what they’re going to do. But I don’t think anybody would say you don’t need informants, so I can’t imagine them closing an effort to develop informants. I mean, informants are crucial to law enforcement and crucial to the counterterrorism effort. It’s how you run them that makes this unit unique. So, I would be—I would be really surprised if they just said, "We’re not going to use informants anymore." But I think we’re all waiting to see what the new guidelines the new police commissioner comes up with on what the rules are going to be.
AMY GOODMAN: In a statement, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said, "Our administration has promised the people of New York a police force that keeps our city safe, but that is also respectful and fair. This reform is a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve so that our cops and our citizens can help one another go after the real bad guys." That’s the words of Mayor de Blasio. Linda Sarsour, how did the Demographics Unit affect your community and you?
LINDA SARSOUR: The Demographic Unit, as Matt explained, are—you know, created psychological warfare in our community. You didn’t know who you were sitting with at the café. You didn’t know, if someone was asking, you know, "What do you think about what’s happening in Palestine/Israel?" if you wanted to even get into a political discussion. You know, many people who are in our community are fleeing political persecution, and they come from countries where you’re not allowed to speak up against the government. You could be arrested. People talking about, you know, religious leaders, recording their sermons, afraid that an informant will take them out of context—you know, being at the mosque and not knowing who the person next to you is and thinking they might be an informant, it just really creates psychological warfare in a community. And I think that the disbandment of the Zone Assessment Unit, for me, is definitely a welcomed first up, but it’s going to take years to undo the trauma that the American Muslim community has endured under Commissioner Kelly and his Intelligence Division with the help of the CIA.
AMY GOODMAN: How did this happen, the closing of the Demographics Unit? Often we hear about a decision, that it was—and you assume it was just inspired by the leader that announces that decision, the mayor or the governor. What kind of grassroots activism went into this?
LINDA SARSOUR: This has been years of activism from members of the American Muslim community and our allies. It includes courageous plaintiffs who have taken risks to sue the New York Police Department in a lawsuit, Raza v. The City of New York. We have a lawsuit out of New Jersey, as well. This is—included public pressure, rallies, joining coalitions with the folks working on stop-and-frisk to show that the New York Police Department has been conducting discriminatory police practices against many communities of color, including political activists. So, I don’t think the NYPD just woke up one morning and was like, "We want to be really nice today and disband the unit." I think it took years of advocacy work. It included the—you know, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman stories to help us kind of pull back the veil on the secretive program that was being conducted without any public information and without us knowing where our taxpayer dollars were going. So, this is definitely a community-wide effort.
AMY GOODMAN: Yes, Matt Apuzzo?
MATT APUZZO: Well, I was just going to add—you know, you said they didn’t wake up in the morning and decide to be nice to Muslims. In this instance, I think—I think they did a review of this program. And by any—by any accounting, even people inside the unit, you know, the bosses have said it didn’t produce any—it didn’t produce anything. It didn’t generate any leads. It didn’t lead to any terrorism investigations. And as one CIA official, who, you know, was read in on this—and we talk about this in our book—she reads it, and she says to Dave, "Dave, you know where the Muslims are, but this doesn’t tell you where the terrorists are." I mean, so I think this is—this is an easy one to say, "Well, this is expensive, and we’re spending money on food and expenses, and what are we getting in return?" So, I agree it wasn’t an effort to sort of be nice to anybody. I think they made a law enforcement decision that, "Hey, we could do this just by going in overtly and saying, 'Here we are. We'd like to have a relationship with you.’"
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking to MSNBC last year, New York City police commissioner at the time, Ray Kelly, responded to an earlier report by Matt Apuzzo, at the time working for AP, that the NYPD has labeled mosques as terrorist organizations. Commissioner Kelly insisted the NYPD’s operations were legal.
COMMISSIONER RAY KELLY: I haven’t seen the story, but they’re hyping a book that’s coming out next week. Actually, the book is based on a compilation of about 50 articles that two AP reporters did on the department. If it’s a reflection of the articles, then the book will be a fair amount of fiction. It will be half-truths. It will be lots of quotes from unnamed sources. And our sin is to have the temerity, the chutzpah, to go into the federal government’s territory of counterterrorism and trying to protect this city by supplementing what the federal government has done.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: You do agree that entire mosques should not be labeled terrorist organizations, right?
COMMISSIONER RAY KELLY: Absolutely, of course, of course.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: OK. Let’s—
COMMISSIONER RAY KELLY: And again, we do—we do according to the law. What we’re investigating and how we investigate is done pursuant to a federal judge’s direction.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: That was the former police commissioner of New York, Ray Kelly, talking about Matt Apuzzo, now with The New York Times, won the Pulitzer Prize for his exposé of what the New York police were doing in New York in the Police Department. Matt, your response to what he was saying? This is all about hyping a book, he said.
MATT APUZZO: Well, I mean, you know, the facts speak for themselves. I mean, we interviewed people on the record in the book. It was really footnoted. There’s not really a dispute anymore, I don’t think, about what the NYPD was doing. You know, like everything, like with we’re hearing with the NSA, when people know what’s going on, we can have a debate about whether we should be doing it. And this is all sort of, I think, part of an examination that’s going on about surveillance and national security tactics, and we’re, you know, a decade after 9/11. Now that people know what’s going on, we can have sort of an informed debate about what we want it to be.
AMY GOODMAN: What was your first tip that broke this story wide open?
MATT APUZZO: You know, there wasn’t one tip. I mean, it started with just a series of conversations that Adam and I had while looking at CIA, you know, shenanigans on other stories, and we just sort of fell into this.
AMY GOODMAN: And do you think the Demographics Unit, Linda, as we wrap up, ends the kind of infiltration and intrusion into your community?
LINDA SARSOUR: Absolutely not. The closing of the unit is just one small step. We want to still talk about the informants that are being sent in our community, the standards in which they are sent. We want it to be based on suspicion of criminal activity, not just because of our faith. We want to talk about the new guidelines that the commissioner is working on and how communities could be involved in that process. This is a multi-step process, and there’s going to be probably decades until our community overcomes this. And we just hope that whatever we’re doing in the meantime, that it’s not going to affect the future community beyond the Muslim community.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us. Linda Sarsour is director of the Arab American Association of New York, national advocacy director for the National Network for Arab American Communities. And Matt Apuzzo is part of the team of reporters at the Associated Press that won the Pulitzer Prize for their exposé of the New York Police Department’s infiltration into the Muslim community. He now works for The New York Times and is co-author of Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD’s Secret Spying Unit and Bin Laden’s Final Plot Against America.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we’re going to London. How many environmentalists have been killed over the last decade? The number will astound you. Stay with us.
Headlines:
Ukraine, Pro-Russian Separatists Clash on Eve of Talks
Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists are staging rival shows of force amidst a growing risk of violent escalation. Ukrainian soldiers moved in to retake government buildings from the separatists on Tuesday, sparking at least one clash in a provincial airfield. Meanwhile, separatists in the town of Kramatorsk seized armored personnel carriers and a tank from the Ukraine army. Ukraine and Russia will be joined by the United States and the European Union for talks beginning Thursday in Geneva. It is the first time Russia and Ukraine’s foreign ministers will meet face to face since the crisis began. At the White House, Press Secretary Jay Carney said the Obama administration backs Ukraine’s incursions to retake buildings from the separatists.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney: "We appreciate the government’s statements that any actions it undertakes will be gradual and responsible, and we agree that the use of force is not a preferred option. That said, the Ukrainian government has a responsibility to provide law and order, and these provocations in eastern Ukraine are creating a situation in which the government has to respond. The best way to de-escalate this situation is for the armed militants to leave the buildings they have seized."
3 Afghan Civilians Reported Dead in U.S. Bombing
A U.S. air strike in eastern Afghanistan has reportedly killed three civilians. The victims were identified as a woman and two children who may have been camping in tents. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called the attack a violation of U.S. and Afghan agreements. The U.S.-led NATO force says it is investigating.
Iraq Shutters Abu Ghraib Prison over Militant Threat
The Iraqi government has closed the Abu Ghraib prison, site of the notorious U.S. abuse scandal that helped bring Bush-era torture policies to light. Iraq’s Justice Ministry says it has shuttered Abu Ghraib over fears it could be overrun by Sunni militants. This month marks the 10th anniversary of the release of photos that showed U.S. forces torturing Abu Ghraib prisoners.
U.N. Security Council Views Graphic Images from Syrian Defector
The U.N. Security Council held a session Tuesday to view photographs documenting alleged war crimes by the Assad regime in Syria. A team of three international prosecutors has obtained images from a Syrian defector showing emaciated and mutilated bodies likely resulting from torture. The defector is said to be a military investigator who handed over thousands of photographs he had taken of the regime’s victims. David Crane, chief prosecutor at the Sierra Leone war crimes tribunal, said the images provide direct proof of "industrialized" killings by Assad.
David Crane: "Our conclusion in the report was that the photographs and the witness himself are credible and sustainable in a court of law at the international or domestic level and that what he brought out over a period of two years is direct, specific, provable evidence of widespread and industrialized killing not seen recently. And the reason I underscore this is, and I’ll highlight it again, it’s a rare thing in our business that we get this type of direct evidence. But it’s direct, provable, sustainable, beyond a reasonable doubt evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity being conducted by the Assad regime."
Report: Syrian Rebels Obtain U.S.-Made Missiles
Anti-government rebels in Syria have reportedly obtained a shipment of U.S.-made missiles for the first time. Agence France-Presse reports a unit of the Free Syrian Army received the TOW missiles from a "Western source."
Hundreds Missing in Sinking of Korean Ferry
Hundreds of people are missing after a passenger ferry sunk in waters off the Korean Peninsula. The South Korean ship was carrying close to 500 people on board. Around 180 have been rescued so far. At least two people are confirmed dead.
Owner of Collapsed Bangladeshi Garment Factory Faces Murder Charge
An owner of the Bangladesh garment factory where hundreds of people died last year is facing charges of murder. The collapse of the eight-story Rana Plaza was one of the worst industrial disasters in history, killing 1,135 garment workers and injuring more than 2,500. Bangladeshi police say they will charge Sohel Rana with murder as part of indictments that include around 40 other people. The disaster’s one-year anniversary is next week.
NYPD Abandons Controversial Muslim Spying Unit
The New York City Police Department is disbanding a controversial spying unit that targeted Muslim communities. The so-called Demographics Unit secretly infiltrated Muslim student groups, sent informants into mosques, eavesdropped on conversations in restaurants, barber shops and gyms, and built a vast database of information. But after years of collecting information, it failed to yield a single terrorism investigation or even a single lead. The program was established with help from the CIA, which is barred from domestic spying. In a joint statement, the groups Muslim Advocates and the Center for Constitutional Rights called the decision a "long overdue first step," saying: "What has to stop is the practice of suspicion-less surveillance of Muslim communities, not just the unit assigned to do it."
Detroit Pensioners Reach 1st Post-Bankruptcy Deal
Retired firefighters and police officers in Detroit have reached a deal that would mostly protect their pensions in the face of pressure to accept massive cuts. The workers are among some 30,000 retired and active public employees who have faced threats to their retirement benefits following the bankruptcy filing by Detroit’s emergency manager last year. Under the new agreement, members of the Retired Detroit Police and Fire Fighters Association will keep their pension benefits. But cost-of-living increases will be cut in half. The deal is the first between Detroit and a group of public workers since the bankruptcy process began. It is contingent on more than $800 million in outside funding from charities, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the state of Michigan. The Obama administration is also reportedly in talks to add $100 million in federal aid.
Boston Marks 1st Anniversary of Marathon Bombing
A ceremony was held Tuesday to mark the one-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing. Three people were killed and 264 were wounded when a pair of homemade bombs exploded near the race’s finish line. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and bombing survivor Patrick Downes, who lost a leg in the attack, paid tribute to the community response and the resilience of survivors.
Gov. Deval Patrick: "The thing we witnessed in the aftermath of that vicious attack last year, and that I submit we are here today to celebrate, is precisely that sense of community, that enduring and transcendent display you and so many others showed last year of kindness and grace."
Patrick Downes: "To our fellow survivor community, what would we do without each other? We should have never met this way, but we are so grateful for each other. We have shared our despair, sense of loss and challenges, as well as our hope, gratitude and triumphs."
Oklahoma Bars Local Efforts to Raise Minimum Wage
Oklahoma has enacted a measure that bars local officials from raising the minimum wage. The new law blocks an effort underway in Oklahoma City to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.
Arizona Enacts Law Authorizing Warrantless Inspection of Abortion Clinics
Arizona has enacted a measure that allows surprise inspections of state abortion clinics without first obtaining a warrant. Critics say anti-choice officials could use the law to disrupt clinics’ operations.
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