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Federal authorities are reportedly investigating whether people who carried out one of the worst mass lynchings in recent history are still alive and can be brought to justice. It was July 25, 1946, when a white mob in rural Georgia ambushed a car carrying two African-American couples, dragged them out and shot them to death. One of the men, George Dorsey, was a military veteran who had recently returned from serving five years overseas in World War II. His wife, Mae Murray Dorsey, was also killed. Dorothy Malcom, the other woman in the car, was seven months pregnant. The mob cut her open and removed her unborn child. Her husband, Roger Malcom, had just been bailed out of jail after he was accused of stabbing a white man. A coroner estimated people in the crowd fired more than 60 shots at the two couples, at close range. The horrific attack was carried out near Walton County, Georgia, not far from Moore’s Ford Bridge. It became known as the Moore’s Ford lynching, and sparked a national outcry, prompting President Harry Truman to push for civil rights reform. The FBI also investigated, but no one was ever convicted of the four murders. But a relative of one of the men allegedly involved in the attack has come forward in a videotaped interview with the NAACP. Wayne Watson says his uncle and several other men he named were members of the Ku Klux Klan. We speak to Edward DuBose, a member of the NAACP national board and former president of the Georgia branch of the NAACP, and journalist Herb Boyd.
Image Credit: fireinacanebrake.com / Courtesy of Charley Brooks
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A new report we covered here on Democracy Now! called "Lynching in America" has brought the legacy of racial terror back into the public conversation, and now federal authorities are reportedly investigating whether people who carried out one of the worst mass lynchings in recent history are still alive and can be brought to justice.
It was July 25th, 1946, when a white mob in rural Georgia ambushed a car carrying two African-American couples, dragged them out and shot them to death. One of the men, George Dorsey, was a military veteran who had recently returned from serving five years overseas in World War II. His wife, Mae Murray Dorsey, was also killed. Dorothy Malcom, the other woman in the car, was seven months pregnant. The mob cut her open and removed her unborn child. Her husband, Roger, had just been bailed out of jail after he was accused of stabbing a white man. A coroner estimated people in the crowd fired more than 60 shots at the two couples at close range. The horrific attack was carried out near Walton County, Georgia, not far from Moore’s Ford Bridge. It became known as the Moore’s Ford lynching and sparked a national outcry, even prompting President Harry Truman to push for civil rights reform. The FBI also investigated, but no one was ever convicted of the four murders.
AMY GOODMAN: Now that could all change. A relative of one of the men allegedly involved in the attack has come forward in a videotaped interview with the NAACP. Wayne Watson says his uncle and several other men he named were members of the Ku Klux Klan. This is a clip from his 2013 interview with then-president of the NAACP Ben Jealous.
WAYNE WATSON: And people tried to bribe me. I’ve been to prison, a detention center.
BEN JEALOUS: Why is—why does this case bother you so much? I mean, you’ve had a lot of people ask you to keep your mouth shut.
WAYNE WATSON: Yeah.
BEN JEALOUS: Why do you stay interested in it?
WAYNE WATSON: Why?
BEN JEALOUS: Yeah.
WAYNE WATSON: Because I’m tired of it. I’m tired of—when you go through life, you’re living with lies, or you’re living with people talking about things. I want it all over with. The racism, I mean, I’ve been on the street, and, you know, I told people I’ve dated a black woman [inaudible], and you can’t get nothing. A white man goes around here and says he’s dating a black woman or hanging around black people, you can’t get no loan, you can’t go to no bank, borrow money or nothing. They turn you down.
AMY GOODMAN: This week, The Guardian newspaper reported that after Wayne Watson’s interview, the FBI spoke with one of the men he identified—his uncle, his father’s brother, a man named Charlie Peppers, who’s now 86 years old. Peppers said two FBI agents visited him last year and questioned him for about 40 minutes. The FBI has not confirmed the report but says the probe into the attack remains an active investigation.
Well, for more, we’re joined by Edward DuBose, a member of the NAACP national board and former president of the Georgia branch of the NAACP. He’s a longtime participant in an effort to bring those accountable for the Moore’s Ford lynching to justice. We are also joined by Herb Boyd, Harlem-based activist, teacher, author and journalist. He worked on a documentary about the lynching with the filmmaker Keith Beauchamp.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Ed DuBose, tell us what happened that day, as you understand it.
EDWARD DUBOSE: First of all, good morning, and thank you for having me on the show. You know, we have long talked about this case. We know that. How this case came about, to give you a little background, Mr. Malcom, allegedly—and we know that to be the case—stabbed a gentleman, Mr. Hester, but it was rumored that he had been sleeping with Mr. Malcom’s wife. And so, we know that after this incident, Mr. Malcom was arrested. Not even three weeks later, he was—bail was posted for him. And this gentleman, his wife, Mr. Dorsey and his wife were all taken to this Moore’s Ford Bridge, where they were brutally lynched and, as you all stated in the beginning of the show, shot over 60 times.
We know that there was a grand jury that was impaneled. Over 50 suspects were of interest, were interviewed. But no one—no one was ever accused. No one was ever arrested. And so we have this mass public lynching, one of the last mass public lynchings, one of the most egregious acts, and included in this is a World War II veteran. No one has ever been brought to justice in this case. And so, we’re so glad that you all and other media outlets are taking a look at this case, as we continue to push for justice.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, there was a—wasn’t there an Associated Press report of several years ago that claimed that there was some indication that the governor at the time, Eugene Talmadge, had actually visited that particular town, spoken to the—spoken to the brother of the man who had been stabbed, and basically said, "Anybody who takes care of the African American who was involved in this, they don’t have to worry." Is that—
EDWARD DUBOSE: That’s absolutely correct. And remember, during that time, Governor Talmadge ran on the platform, "Segregation now, segregation forever," you know, and so he was politically motivated and, many would say, empowered the people in his community to let them know it’s OK, you know, African-American—black life don’t matter. And so, you’re absolutely correct. Governor Talmadge, in his own right, sent a message to this county and to the state.
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about Wayne Watson naming names, and just who Wayne Watson is.
EDWARD DUBOSE: Wayne Watson is a gentleman from Monroe, Georgia, Walton County, who had been sought out by one of our people in the county. People had always said that there was no one alive, there was no one available, that would be able to shed light on this case. Well, we’re so glad that Mr. Watson was found. And we were able to bring our then-president, Ben Jealous, to interview with Mr. Watson. His interview was so compelling that initially we were just talking to him, but he began to name names and locations and people and places. And our president, Jealous, said, "Wait a minute, we need to get this on tape. This guy is talking about very compelling information that the FBI need to be aware of."
AMY GOODMAN: So let’s go back to that interview that the former president of the NAACP, Ben Jealous, did with Wayne Watson, who says he previously reported his allegations to local law enforcement officials.
WAYNE WATSON: Alan Cook, the DA, was trying to find out who knew about it and everything like that. And evidently, my attorney told somebody or told him. Come next thing I know, everybody in Walton County knew I was the one that knew about the KKK, who was alive. And people tried to bribe me. I’ve been to prison, a detention center, and they offered me money. Robert Mitchell offered me $250,000 to keep my mouth shut, walk away in '99. I told him I wouldn't do it. He said, "You’ll be dead before you ever testify."
AMY GOODMAN: That, again, another part of that Wayne Watson interview with Ben Jealous. Ed DuBose, if you could comment on that, and also, how was Dr. King involved? I mean, this lynching was 1946.
EDWARD DUBOSE: Yeah, and again, first off, let me thank also State Representative Tyrone Brooks. I don’t want to be on the show without giving him the credit due for convening us in this case. So, Dr. King had been informed about this case. Dr. King had made a commitment that after he left Memphis, that he would be visiting Walton County. And so Dr. King never made it. You’ll recall that Dr. King was assassinated. But Dr. King was always interested in this case and coming to Walton County to speak out on this injustice.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Herb Boyd, talk about the significance of this case and why you got involved in a documentary on it.
HERB BOYD: Well, it was certainly Keith Beauchamp’s idea. You know, he had put together The Untold Story of Emmett Till, and it has pushed him more and more into the history of lynching. It’s good to see that Bryan Stevenson, you know, has brought out that study and connecting up, in terms of contextualizing 1946. Here’s a returning veteran, gone off, you know, fought for this country, to come home, virtually still in uniform, you know, when he’s abducted, along with his wife, along with Roger Malcom and Dorothy. She’s seven months pregnant. So when we heard about that, Keith said, "Let’s do this one." And the most powerful thing about his documentary is the re-enactment that we do on that particular incident.
AMY GOODMAN: And what did you discover at that time, in terms of what has been investigated?
HERB BOYD: Well, you know, we were looking at how the FBI would be involved in this situation, because they had given the other cases we had worked on, had given us every indication that they were going to seriously pursue this situation. Tyrone Brooks was very, very instrumental in helping us understanding the background on the situation. But I don’t know. You know, it just kind of stalled at that point. We went on to other projects, and only recently, with it popping up in the news again, we have to go back and revisit and take a look again at the kind of research we did on that situation.
AMY GOODMAN: Ed DuBose, at this point, what are you calling for now?
EDWARD DUBOSE: Well we’ve endorsed a letter, last year and even this year, to the Senate Judiciary Committee. We want the Congress and the Senate, the U.S. Congress and Senate, to take a look at this case, calls for an investigation of this case, because keep in mind, in 2008, then Congressman John Lewis and Senator Christopher Dodd sponsored the Emmett Till bill, which allocated resources for cold cases. It has never been fully funded. And so, one, we want it to be fully funded to give the resources to the Federal Bureau of Investigation that they need. If that’s the hold-up, give them the money that they need, that has already been voted on. And President Obama can—he can do that. And so, we hope that people who are watching will join us in reaching out to your Congress or Senate and tell them to communicate with Mr. Grassley, Chairman Grassley, to allow this case to be investigated and those responsible brought to justice. If we can take—if we could find Nazis in the United States who have committed atrocities, certainly we can find people in Walton County, Georgia.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And there’s an indication that there are still several people who may have participated in it that are alive?
EDWARD DUBOSE: We are convinced that, and we believe that the FBI is convinced—we hope that they move—that there are people still alive who were involved in this case. There were over 200 people on that bridge. You couldn’t tell me that all of them are dead now.
AMY GOODMAN: Charlie Peppers?
EDWARD DUBOSE: Charlie Peppers, I believe, knows more than what Charlie Peppers is saying. And I hope they continue to interview him.
AMY GOODMAN: We were just showing the re-enactment from the film that Herb Boyd worked on with Keith Beauchamp of the 1946 lynching. We thank you both for being with us. Ed DuBose is member of the NAACP national board and former president of the Georgia branch of the NAACP, has worked for years on the case, bringing—wanting to try to bring those accountable in the Moore’s Ford lynching to justice. And, Herb Boyd, we ask you to stay with us—
HERB BOYD: Sure.
AMY GOODMAN: —because next up we’re talking about Malcolm X on this, the 50th anniversary of his assassination. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Back in a minute.
This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X, one of the most influential political figures of the 20th century. He was shot dead as he spoke before a packed audience at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City on February 21, 1965. Malcolm X had just taken the stage when shots rang out riddling his body with bullets. He was 39 years old. Details of his assassination remain disputed to this day. We air highlights from his speeches, "By Any Means Necessary" and "The Ballot or the Bullet." We also speak with journalist Herb Boyd, who along with Malcolm X’s daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz, co-edited "The Diary of Malcolm X: El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, 1964."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X, one of the most influential political figures of the 20th century. He was shot dead as he spoke before a packed audience at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem on February 21st, 1965. Malcolm X had just taken the stage when shots rang out, riddling his body with bullets. He was 39 years old. This is Malcolm X speaking a week before he was assassinated.
MALCOLM X: My house was bombed. It was bombed by the Black Muslim movement upon the orders of Elijah Muhammad. Now, they had come around to—they had planned to do it from the front and the back so that I couldn’t get out. They covered the front completely, the front door. Then they had come to the back, but instead of getting directly in back of the house and throwing it this way, they stood at a 45-degree angle and tossed it at the window so it glanced and went onto the ground. And the fire hit the window, and it woke up my second-oldest baby. And then it—but the fire burned on the outside of the house.
But had that fire—had that one gone through that window, it would have fallen on a six-year-old girl, a four-year-old girl and a two-year-old girl. And I’m going to tell you, if it had done it, I’d taken my rifle and gone after anybody in sight. I would not wait, ’cause in—and I said that because of this: The police know the criminal operation of the Black Muslim movement because they have thoroughly infiltrated it.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Malcolm X in 1965, just a week before he was shot dead at the Audubon Ballroom. Details of his assassination remain disputed to this day. Half a year earlier, he gave a speech at the Audubon Ballroom called "By Any Means Necessary." This is an excerpt.
MALCOLM X: One of the first things that the independent African nations did was to form an organization called the Organization of African Unity. […] The purpose of our […] Organization of Afro-American Unity, which has the same aim and objective to fight whoever gets in our way, to bring about the complete independence of people of African descent here in the Western Hemisphere, and first here in the United States, and bring about the freedom of these people by any means necessary. That’s our motto. […]
The purpose of our organization is to start right here in Harlem, which has the largest concentration of people of African descent that exists anywhere on this Earth. There are more Africans here in Harlem than exist in any city on the African continent, because that’s what you and I are: Africans. […]
The Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights are the principles in which we believe, and that these documents, if put into practice, represent the essence of mankind’s hopes and good intentions; desirous that all Afro-American people and organizations should henceforth unite so that the welfare and well-being of our people will be assured; we are resolved to reinforce the common bond of purpose between our people by submerging all of our differences and establishing nonsectarian, constructive programs for human rights; we hereby present this charter:
I. The Establishment.
The Organization of Afro-American Unity shall include all people of African descent in the Western Hemisphere […] In essence what it is saying, instead of you and me running around here seeking allies in our struggle for freedom in the Irish neighborhood or the Jewish neighborhood or the Italian neighborhood, we need to seek some allies among people who look something like we do. And once we get their allies. It’s time now for you and me to stop running away from the wolf right into the arms of the fox, looking for some kind of help. That’s a drag.
II. Self-Defense.
Since self-preservation is the first law of nature, we assert the Afro-American’s right to self-defense.
The Constitution of the United States of America clearly affirms the right of every American citizen to bear arms. And as Americans, we will not give up a single right guaranteed under the Constitution. The history of unpunished violence against our people clearly indicates that we must be prepared to defend ourselves, or we will continue to be a defenseless people at the mercy of a ruthless and violent, racist mob.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: An excerpt from Malcolm X’s 1964 speech, "By Any Means Necessary." This May 19th would have marked his 90th birthday. He was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska. His mother, Louise Norton Little, raised the family’s eight children. His father, Earl Little, was an outspoken Baptist minister and avid supporter of black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey. Malcolm excelled in school but eventually dropped out and became a drug dealer, a pimp and a thief. While serving time in prison, he joined the Nation of Islam, a move that would transform his life. He would rise to become the organization’s national spokesperson and one of the most prominent black leaders in the country. He eventually split from the Nation and founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Malcolm chose the surname "X" to symbolize his lost African name.
AMY GOODMAN: In 2005, Democracy Now! spoke to the renowned African-American historian Manning Marable about the life and legacy of Malcolm X. At the time, Professor Marable was working on a monumental biography of Malcolm X. He explained why he believes Malcolm X was one of the nation’s greatest political thinkers.
MANNING MARABLE: I think that Malcolm X was the most remarkable historical figure produced by black America in the 20th century. That’s a heavy statement, but I think that in his 39 short years of life, Malcolm came to symbolize black urban America, its culture, its politics, its militancy, its outrage against structural racism and, at the end of his life, a broad internationalist vision of emancipatory power far better than any other single individual, that he shared with Du Bois and Paul Robeson a pan-Africanist internationalist perspective. He shared with Marcus Garvey a commitment to building strong black institutions. He shared with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a commitment to peace and the freedom of racialized minorities. He was the first prominent American to attack and to criticize the U.S. role in Southeast Asia, and he came out four-square against the Vietnam War in 1964, long before the vast majority of Americans did. So that Malcolm X represents the cutting edge of a kind of critique of globalization in the 21st century. And in fact, Malcolm, if anything, was far ahead of the curve in so many ways.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Columbia University professor Manning Marable speaking to Democracy Now! in 2005. His nearly 600-page biography on Malcolm X took approximately two decades to write. The book was published in 2011 and is called Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Just days before its publication, Marable died of complications from pneumonia. He was posthumously awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for History for the book.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, this weekend, commemorations for Malcolm X are scheduled across the country. Here in New York Saturday, a memorial will be jointly sponsored by the Malcolm X Museum, the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Education Center and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The evening will focus on Malcolm X’s legacy and impact from an international perspective.
For more, we’re joined by Herb Boyd, Harlem-based activist, teacher, author and journalist. He edits the online publication, The Black World Today, and writes for several publications, including the Amsterdam News. Boyd and Malcolm X’s daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz, co-edited The Diary of Malcolm X: El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, 1964.
Herb Boyd, welcome to Democracy Now!, again.
HERB BOYD: Always a pleasure. Thank you, Amy, Juan.
AMY GOODMAN: So, this diary, explain. People have heard of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
HERB BOYD: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain The Diary of Malcolm X.
HERB BOYD: Well, I think the diary fills in a lot of the questions that are raised with the autobiography. I think it complements it very well, and at the same time expands and elaborates on where Malcolm’s head was at that time. People often ask, "Well, where would Malcolm be right now?" I think we get a good indication where he was then, that where he would be right now. And—
AMY GOODMAN: Where did you find the diary?
HERB BOYD: The diary is at the Schomburg. It’s been there since the materials, his memorabilia, arrived there after going up into auction in Butterfield and Butterfield, and the family sued, a court injunction, stopped the sale of that material online, particularly with eBay. So, they stopped it. The stuff reverted back to the family, came back to the Schomburg in two huge crates. I mean, Malcolm was a pack rat. He kept everything.
AMY GOODMAN: This had all been at a storage facility?
HERB BOYD: Oh, yeah. It was like—the family had lapsed on payments down in Florida. A man named James Calhoun—you know, when you go to auction, you buy stuff like a pig in a poke. You don’t know exactly what’s inside of it. He got home and discovered he had a treasure trove. He then got in touch with Butterfield and Butterfield, and that’s when the whole process began in which the court had to intervene, stop the sale of that stuff. It came back to the family. The daughters were at the Schomburg, had a press conference there. The two huge crates had been returned there. A 75-year contract was signed with the Schomburg. It took them, Amy, five years before that stuff was catalogued, laminated, what have you, and prepared for scholars to do their research, as Manning Marable did.
But at the time, I was the only reporter, along with a photographer, who was invited over when they opened the crates up. And that’s when I saw the diary for the first time. And in the back of my mind—you know, I did several stories at that time for the Amsterdam News, but always in the back of my mind, I said, "One of these days, I’m going to read that diary." And it finally came to pass, you know, and I had a chance to see it. And I thought this is something that the world needed to see. And then I got on with Ilyasah, and she agreed that maybe let’s push forward on the project.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the diary covers what period of his life?
HERB BOYD: Malcolm, the last year and a half of his life was probably the most exciting period. Of course, he’s ever-evolving. But you find that 1964, he spent 24 weeks, you know, six months, traveling in Africa and the Middle East. That’s what that diary is all about, copious notes he kept day to day. To some degree, it represents a kind of an appointment book. But in a larger sense, you know, he’s writing for posterity. You know, Malcolm even told his agent at that time, Paul Reynolds, that "One of these days, I’d like to publish this." Much of that—some of that is lifted and put into the autobiography. But still, there’s so many revelations that comes from out of the diary that people who read this are just going to be absolutely astonished and astounded.
You know, what’s going on in his mind at that time? You remember, he’s literally flying by the seat of his pants. He’s not like Secretary Kerry or Secretary Clinton, you know, with a whole entourage, a retinue of people with him, feeding him all kind of, you know, background material, talking points. He’s doing this on his own. So, you know, just to travel to foreign countries, and the climate, the diet, the language, all of that stuff is just impacting him all at once. So, he was sick a lot in these travels, but nonetheless, you know, the kind of fortitude and determination that he represented in so many instances. Right after his house was firebombed, for example—people don’t know that it happened early in the morning. By 9:00, Malcolm is on a plane coming to Detroit, living up to his commitment to speak there at the Ford Auditorium later that day.
So, I mean, that’s where I come into his life, you know, I mean, when I recognized the man who could do that, although I had met Malcolm when I was 20 years of age back in nineteen hundred da-da-da. I met him then and was a part of that whole group of people around him in the Nation of Islam, and when he left the Nation, I left, too, although I was in the military at that point. But, you know, Malcolm has been in my life, you know, since 1958.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what are some of the most—the nuggets that stood out to you when you were putting together the diary?
HERB BOYD: The diary. One of the things that—one of the main revelations for me was that I think we nailed who the CIA agent was who was shadowing Malcolm at that time. Even in his autobiography, remember that he speculated and kind of suspected that he was being shadowed and under surveillance by the FBI. But, of course, you know, when he goes abroad, the CIA picks it up. But he was looking like maybe some white man was doing it, but it turns out it was a black man who was a CIA agent. And it’s all circumstantial at this point, because he’s popping up, this one man that we follow.
AMY GOODMAN: What was his name?
HERB BOYD: And we won’t divulge his name. We say, "Hey, get the diary, and you can follow that trail." But we followed his trail all the way to FRELIMO, the liberation movement, you know, in Mozambique. And he had been kicked out of that organization because they suspected he was a foreign agent. So that’s kind of like a red flag went up right then, you know?
AMY GOODMAN: Did Malcolm know his name?
HERB BOYD: Malcolm met with him on several occasions in four different countries. And you’d think that he would be like, "Mm, this guy keeps popping up." However, he kind of foisted himself off as being a journalist. So he had every reason maybe to say, "Oh, he’s following me around and"—
AMY GOODMAN: Is he alive today?
HERB BOYD: He’s alive. He’s still alive. I was in touch with him by email, but he has no idea about this particular project, I suspect, you know?
AMY GOODMAN: Would you like to share his name here?
HERB BOYD: I think you can read the diary there, Amy. We’ve got to leave something there for the readers, you know, because it’s all circumstantial at this point.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And we were just mentioning the Manning Marable autobiography, and you’ve said to us that—
HERB BOYD: His biography, mm-hmm.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: His biography, and that you said that your book, By Any Means Necessary, is in essence a counter-argument. Could you talk about that and your concerns about the Manning Marable book?
HERB BOYD: Well, what happens with this here, and we—you notice the title, By Any Means Necessary: Malcolm X: Real, Not Reinvented, and we stress that word "reinvented" because that came out in Manning’s side. And we say that that word, the connotation was like, hmm, kind of manipulative, that was deliberately going through this process of reinventing himself. We feel that he was an ever-evolving, if anything, a transforming individual, and his development, you know, was just ceaseless, you know? And so, I contacted three of the other co-editors there—Dr. Maulana Karenga, Dr. Ron Daniels and, of course, Dr. Haki Madhubuti—at Third World Press. And we decided, after going through like 75 to 100 reviews of Manning Marable’s book, and kind of looked at him in terms of the pros and cons, you know, the positive and the negatives, and decided like, "Why don’t we assemble these here particular impressions and put it in a particular book?" And that’s what we did with this particular effort, to show that, hey, here’s what some of the other thinkers, scholars and activists out there, who—some of them close associates and worked over the years with Malcolm—here’s what they have to say about Manning’s interpretation. And, of course, there’s a number of things beyond just the title that we took exception to, in terms of his analysis and, of course, the conclusions that he put forth in terms of Malcolm’s infidelity, so-called homosexuality, and of course the proposed three missing chapters. None of that really occurs.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Herb Boyd, we’re going to end with an excerpt of a speech by Malcolm X given in Detroit a year before he was gunned down. The speech, very famous, known as "The Ballot or the Bullet."
MALCOLM X: Just as it took nationalism to move—to remove colonialism from Asia and Africa, it’ll take black nationalism today to remove colonialism from the backs and the minds of 22 million Afro-Americans here in this country.
Looks like it might be the year of the ballot or the bullet. Why does it look like it might be the year of the ballot or the bullet? Because Negroes have listened to the trickery and the lies and the false promises of the white man now for too long. And they’re fed up. They’ve become disenchanted. They’ve become disillusioned. They’ve become dissatisfied, and all of this has built up frustrations in the black community that makes the black community throughout America today more explosive than all of the atomic bombs the Russians can ever invent.
Whenever you got a racial powder keg sitting in your lap, you’re in more trouble than if you had an atomic powder keg sitting in your lap. When a racial powder keg goes off, it doesn’t care who it knocks out the way. Understand this, it’s dangerous, because what can the white man use now to fool us after he put down that March on Washington? And you see all through that now. He tricked you, had you marching down to Washington. Yes, had you marching back and forth between the feet of a dead man named Lincoln and another dead man named George Washington, singing "We Shall Overcome." He made a chump out of you. He made a fool out of you. He made you think you were going somewhere, and you end up going nowhere but between Lincoln and Washington.
So today, our people are disillusioned. They’ve become disenchanted. They’ve become dissatisfied, and in their frustrations they want action.
AMY GOODMAN: Malcolm X, speaking a year before he was gunned down. The speech is known as "The Ballot or the Bullet." This is Democracy Now! The anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X, February 21st, is Saturday. February 21st, 1965, Malcolm X was gunned down at the Audubon Ballroom. Herb Boyd, Harlem-based activist, teacher, author and journalist, thanks so much for joining us.
HERB BOYD: Thank you. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.
A new investigation by The Intercept reveals the National Security Agency and its British counterpart, the GCHQ, hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe. The secret operation targeted the Dutch company Gemalto. Its clients include AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world. It produces two billion SIM cards a year. According to The Intercept, the stolen encryption keys give intelligence agencies the ability to monitor mobile communications without seeking or receiving approval from telecom companies and foreign governments. According to The Intercept, agents from the NSA and GCHQ formed the Mobile Handset Exploitation Team in 2010 to specifically target vulnerabilities in cellphones. The Intercept’s report was written by Jeremy Scahill and Josh Begley. It was based on documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. We speak to Chris Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union. He is also a visiting fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project.
Watch Part 2 of the interview:
Security Researcher Christopher Soghoian on How to Use a Cellphone Without Being Spied On
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TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A new investigation by The Intercept reveals the National Security Agency and its British counterpart, the GCHQ, hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe. The secret operation targeted the Dutch company Gemalto. Its clients include AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world. It produces two billion SIM cards a year. According to The Intercept, the stolen encryption keys give intelligence agencies the ability to monitor mobile communications without seeking or receiving approval from telecom companies and foreign governments.
AMY GOODMAN: Agents from the NSA and the GCHQ formed the Mobile Handset Exploitation Team in 2010 to specifically target vulnerabilities in cellphones. The intelligence agencies obtained the encryption keys by hacking into the email and Facebook accounts of engineers and other employees of Gemalto and other major companies. Some of the employees were singled out for sending PGP-encrypted files. The Intercept’s report was written by Jeremy Scahill and Josh Begley. It was based on documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden.
To talk more about the significance of this story, we’re joined by Chris Soghoian. He is the principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, also a visiting fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project. "The Great SIM Heist: How Spies Stole the Keys to the Encryption Castle" is the name of the story.
Chris, welcome to Democracy Now!, joining us from Charlottesville, Virginia, today. Talk about the significance. What is the great SIM heist?
CHRISTOPHER SOGHOIAN: Well, what we’ve learned is that GCHQ has been engaged in an extremely aggressive effort to obtain these encryption keys. In essence, over the last probably five years or so, telecom companies, wireless carriers around the world have upgraded their networks and moved from older, less secure, second-generation phone technology to more secure, 3G and 4G technology, and as the networks have moved to this newer technology, it’s become much more difficult for governments to spy on communications that take place outside of their own countries. So, for GCHQ, for NSA, for the Chinese and for the Russian governments to be able to spy on telephone calls everywhere in the world, they need these kinds of keys. What we’ve learned just yesterday is that by hacking into one of the largest manufacturers of SIM card keys—or, of SIM cards and the keys that are on them, GCHQ has really acquired a huge amount of information that will make—that will make bulk surveillance of telephone communications very, very easy.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: [inaudible] technically work? Would they be sweeping up in real time all of the conversations and then storing them someplace to be able to look back at them further? I mean, how exactly would it work?
CHRISTOPHER SOGHOIAN: Right. So there’s a special NSA outfit, an NSA-CIA outfit called the Special Collection Service, SCS. And so, they’re based out of embassies and consulates around the world, and they install these antennas on the roofs of embassies and other buildings. And with those antennas, they’re able to grab the data from phones as it’s sent over the air. And so, what they’ll do is they’ll set up these what are called spy nests and grab as many telephone communications as they possibly can and save them. But these telephone communications, telephone calls, text messages and other information are encrypted. And so they save the information, and then once they have the keys, either because they hack into a company like Gemalto or they bribe an engineer or blackmail an engineer, then they can decrypt the communications. And so, essentially, wiretapping then just becomes a mere task of installing an antenna somewhere and recording data.
AMY GOODMAN: You compare the use of encryption keys on SIM cards to the way Social Security numbers are used today. Can you explain?
CHRISTOPHER SOGHOIAN: Sure. So, Social Security numbers were designed in the 1930s for a pretty mundane and basic task, which was keeping track of one’s contributions to their retirement account, their government retirement account. But today they’re used as a quasi-national identification number. We’re supposed to give our Social Security numbers to, you know, a huge number of organizations. It’s how we’re tracked. And the reason we sort of have this system is because there was no formal national identity number. Everyone wants to have one, and so the Social Security number has sort of been forced into that role, but it’s a role that it was never designed or intended for.
By the same token, SIM cards were never really intended to provide strong confidentiality of communications. They weren’t intended to provide strong encryption or strong protection of our communications. Instead, they were really intended to protect telephone numbers and telephone accounts from fraud. In the '80s and 1990s, there was a huge wave of fraud where people were doing what's called cellphone cloning, and they were billing calls to other people’s accounts. And this was a huge problem for the phone companies. They needed a solution. And SIM cards and the encryption keys within them were the solution that they came up with.
You know, we should understand that SIM cards probably cost, you know, 50 cents or a dollar in bulk. These are not, you know, extremely sophisticated, high-security devices. They are basic bits of technology that are designed for one job, which is fraud, that we now depend on for so much more. And if this story demonstrates one thing and one thing alone, it’s that SIM cards and the system of security that surrounds them just isn’t up to the job of protecting our communications.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But I want to go back to something you said before about U.S. embassies being used basically as the centers for grabbing this data in these different countries. In effect, what you’re saying is that virtually every U.S. embassy is basically a spying operation, possibly breaking laws in the very countries that they are—that they’re located in.
CHRISTOPHER SOGHOIAN: My understanding is that’s the norm for embassies around the world, not just the U.S. You know, intelligence agencies operate out of embassies, sometimes with cover. You know, last summer, Der Spiegel published a slide listing the locations of NSA-CIA Special Collection Service sites around the world. This is something that’s been written about in books before. It’s not a big secret. And after the Merkel, Angela Merkel, spying story first broke, one of the German newspapers even published thermal imaging photographs of the spy nest on the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Berlin before the story and after the story, showing that the station had been shut down and was—as it was thus generating much less heat and using much less electricity.
AMY GOODMAN: Chris, when asked for comment by Reuters, GCHQ said its work, quote, "is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework, which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate," they said. Can you respond to that and—we just have less than a minute—how the GCHQ and NSA hacked into the emails and Facebook accounts of employees of telecom companies?
CHRISTOPHER SOGHOIAN: Right. So GCHQ and NSA believe that, essentially, anything is justified as long as it gets them to where they want to be. The engineers at Gemalto were not accused of breaking the law. Gemalto itself is not a criminal enterprise. But these governments want the keys that Gemalto has, and so they’re willing to do anything it takes to get that.
You know, in the last few moments that I have, I really want to let your listeners know that there are things that you can do right now to protect your communications, that the telephone companies have not shown any interest in providing us with secure communications. You cannot trust the voice or text message services provided by your wireless carrier, so you need to download apps. There are some built into the iPhone—iMessage and FaceTime. There are tools like WhatsApp that are—that’s distributed by Facebook. And there are some even better tools like Signal, which is supported by the U.S. government, actually. You can download apps and services and make encrypted telephone calls, send encrypted text messages, that governments cannot easily intercept. But those tools will not be provided to you by your telephone company. You need to take steps and take matters into your own hand.
AMY GOODMAN: Chris Soghoian, I want to thank you for being with us, privacy researcher and activist with the ACLU.
Headlines:
Record Cold in U.S. Follows 2nd Warmest January Worldwide
Record cold temperatures are continuing across the eastern and midwestern United States today with a blast of Arctic air scientists warn is part of a pattern fueled by climate change. In Kentucky, temperatures are in the negative digits, about 40 degrees below normal. Here in New York state, Martin Napier was among those who visited the iconic Niagara Falls — which is frozen.
Martin Napier: "It was like a wall of ice, with lots of stalactites. There was a few stalactites and stalactites made of ice, you know, like icicles. So it was cool. It was completely different from when you’re there in the summer, when it’s just a wall of water, eh? So it was a wall of ice."
The record cold follows what government scientists have just confirmed was the second warmest January on record worldwide. And while New York City may be among some 100 cities currently experiencing record-breaking cold, a new report from the New York City Panel on Climate Change finds average temperatures here could jump nearly 9 degrees Fahrenheit by the 2080s.
White House Extremism Conference Hosts Saudi Arabia, Bahrain
The White House has wrapped up a three-day conference on militant extremism. Speaking Thursday, Obama reiterated his message that groups like the Islamic State do not represent Islam.
President Obama: "At the same time, we must acknowledge that groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL are deliberately targeting their propaganda to Muslim communities, particularly Muslim youth. Now, Muslim communities, including scholars and clerics, therefore have a responsibility to push back, not just on twisted interpretations of Islam, but also on the lie that we are somehow engaged in a clash of civilizations, that America and the West are somehow at war with Islam or seek to suppress Muslims, or that we are the cause of every ill in the Middle East."
The White House conference hosted representatives from countries that have faced global condemnation for the promotion of extremism or repression of their own citizens, including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Somalia: Parliament Members Killed in Hotel Attack
In Somalia, at least 20 people have been killed, including several members of parliament, after militants set off explosions and opened fire at a hotel in the capital Mogadishu. The militant group al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for the attack on the Central Hotel, saying they were targeting government officials.
European Ministers Hold Key Meeting on Greece’s Fate
European finance ministers are meeting today in Brussels for key talks on the financial future of Greece. On Thursday, Greece formally requested a six-month extension of its current loan deal, without making a firm commitment to the deep austerity cuts dictated under its international bailout. But German economy minister Sigmar Gabriel rejected the request.
Sigmar Gabriel: "We’ve recently received an offer from the Greek government, which has been made to all the EU member states as well as the Eurogroup, in which Greece for the first time accepts that without reforms there will be no European (financial) aid. That is a beginning. But we also have to say that this offer is insufficient because it lacks all specific measures in Greece. And that cannot happen. We cannot make it easier in Greece on the shoulders of German and European taxpayers. Over the next few days, especially tomorrow, we need to negotiate further to find an agreement on specific measures."
Report: NSA Hacked World’s Largest SIM Card Maker
A new investigation by The Intercept reveals the National Security Agency and its British counterpart, GCHQ, hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications. The secret operation targeted the Dutch company Gemalto, whose clients include AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world. We will have more on the story later in the broadcast.
Wal-Mart Wage Hike Falls Far Short of Worker Demands
Wal-Mart has announced it will raise its minimum wage to $9 an hour in April, and $10 next year, in a move that will impact about half a million low-wage workers. The increase falls far short of the $15-an-hour living wage demanded by workers who have launched historic strikes against Wal-Mart — and reported retaliation from the company for joining the protests. A 2012 analysis found the six heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune have as much wealth as the bottom 40 percent of the United States combined.
Texas: Same-Sex Couple Marries After Judge Defies Ban
Two women in Austin, Texas, have become the first legally married same-sex couple in the state, despite a longstanding ban on the unions. A state district judge ordered the Travis County clerk to grant a marriage license to Suzanne Bryant and her partner of 30 years, Sarah Goodfriend, saying the couple needed "immediate relief" from the ban because Goodfriend has ovarian cancer. Goodfriend and Bryant celebrated at a news conference.
Sarah Goodfriend: "This really is very, very meaningful to our family to have the kind of ability to make personal decisions, health decisions and financial decisions as a family going forward."
Suzanne Bryant: "We’re just very grateful that we’ve had this opportunity to crack the door open in Texas. We hope it will swing wide for everyone very soon."
Just hours later, the Texas State Supreme Court blocked the order allowing the couple to wed. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has declared the marriage void.
Jury Awards Indian Workers $14 Million in Trafficking Case
A federal jury in New Orleans has awarded $14 million to five Indian workers in a trafficking case involving the firm Signal International. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Signal brought hundreds of people from India to work on repairs at its shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi. The workers say they spent their life savings to come to the United States under false promises of permanent residency. They were then forced to spend more than $1,000 per month to live in squalid work camps, with up to 24 men sharing a single unit with two bathrooms. Those who complained were threatened with deportation. The case is one in a historic series of labor trafficking cases led by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Video: St. Louis Cop Turns Off Dash Cam as Officers Kick Driver
In Missouri, a St. Louis police officer has been suspended after turning off a dashboard camera as her colleagues were kicking and tasing an African-American man during a traffic stop. Cortez Bufford has filed suit against police over the April arrest. Video shows police dragging Bufford from the car, then kicking and tasing him. At one point he shouts, "I can’t move." Then, using the slang term "red," to mean the dashboard camera is rolling, Officer Kelli Swinton tells her colleagues to wait while she turns it off.
Kelli Swinton: "Hold up! Hold up, y’all! Hold up! Hold up! Everybody hold up. We’re red right now, so if you guys are worried about cameras, just wait."
The video then abruptly stops. Police, who had received a call about shots fired in the area, accused Bufford of speeding, making an illegal U-turn and abruptly parking. They say an officer kicked him to prevent him from reaching for a gun, which they say they found in his pocket. But all charges against Bufford were dropped after the prosecutor saw the footage. Police Chief Sam Dotson told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch he does not believe the officers did anything wrong. In addition to Swinton, he suspended a sergeant who was supervising the scene — for one day.
Jeb Bush Culls Advisers from Administrations of Father, Brother
Former Florida governor and likely Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush has drawn criticism for choosing his slate of foreign policy advisers directly from the presidential administrations of his father and brother. Of the 21 names on the list, 19 worked under George W. Bush or George H.W. Bush — or both. The list includes two of George W. Bush’s secretaries of homeland security — Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff — and two of his former CIA directors, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden. Other key figures tapped from his brother’s administration include John Negroponte, who served as ambassador to Iraq and the first director of national intelligence; Paul Wolfowitz, a key architect of the 2003 Iraq War; and George W. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley. All three worked for both Bush presidents. But speaking Wednesday, Jeb Bush said he is his own man.
Jeb Bush: "Look, just for the record, one more time, I love my brother. I love my dad. Actually, love my mother, as well. Hope that’s OK. And I admire their service to the nation and the difficult decisions that they had to make. But I’m my own man, and my views are shaped by my own thinking and my own experiences."
Another name on Jeb Bush’s list of advisers is former Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, a key figure in the overthrow of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide under President George W. Bush.
Clinton Foundation Criticized for Donations from Oil Firms, Oil-Rich Nations
Hillary Clinton, seen as the likely Democratic frontrunner for president, has come under fire from environmental groups after it was revealed her nonprofit foundation has received millions in donations from fossil fuel companies, the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and a Canadian governmental agency promoting the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The Clinton Foundation, run by Hillary and Bill Clinton, and their daughter Chelsea, has raised nearly $2 billion since its creation in 2001.
Reports Accuse Bill O’Reilly of False "War Zone" Claims
Fox News host Bill O’Reilly has come under scrutiny amid reports he fabricated claims about reporting in Latin America. O’Reilly has blasted suspended NBC News anchor Brian Williams for his false reporting about his helicopter coming under fire in Iraq. But Mother Jones has uncovered problems with an oft-repeated O’Reilly story about the war between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands, off Argentina’s coast.
Bill O’Reilly, in 2013 broadcast: "I was in a situation one time in a war zone in Argentina, in the Falklands, where my photographer got run down and then hit his head and was bleeding from the ear on the concrete. And the army was chasing us. I had to make a decision. And I dragged him off, you know, but at the same time, I’m looking around and trying to do my job, but I figure I had to get this guy out of there, because that was more important."
At the time, O’Reilly was working for CBS, and it turns out no CBS reporter got into the Falkland Islands during the war. O’Reilly’s own book, "No Spin Zone," which recounts his time in Argentina, makes no mention of witnessing any combat. O’Reilly denounced the Mother Jones report, saying he never claimed he was in the Falklands. O’Reilly does write in his book about a protest he covered in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires, after the fighting was over, where he claimed "a major riot ensued and many people were killed." But multiple news reports, including the CBS News report from the time, which used O’Reilly’s footage, did not report any fatalities. Meanwhile, The Nation has published footage from O’Reilly’s reporting in El Salvador in the early 1980s, just after the El Mozote massacre, when some 1,000 civilians were slaughtered by U.S.-trained Salvadoran forces. Instead of reporting on El Mozote, The Nation notes, O’Reilly went to nearby Meanguera, the site of a supposed attack by leftist rebels. In his book, O’Reilly wrote Meanguera was "leveled," with "no one live or dead." But his own news report from the time shows several people walking around while the town remains largely intact.
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