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The Obama administration has expanded the national terrorist watchlist system by approving broad guidelines over who can be targeted. A leaked copy of the secret government guidebook reveals that to be deemed a "terrorist" target, "irrefutable evidence or concrete facts are not necessary." Both "known" and "suspected" suspects are tracked, and terrorism is so broadly defined that it includes people accused of damaging property belonging to the government or financial institutions. Other factors that can justify inclusion on the watchlist include postings on social media or having a relative already deemed a terrorist. We are joined by investigative reporters Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux of The Intercept. Last week they published the secret U.S. document along with their new article, "The Secret Government Rulebook for Labeling You a Terrorist."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: The Obama administration has expanded the national terrorist watchlist system by approving broad guidelines over who can be targeted. Reporting for The Intercept, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux obtained the government’s secret watchlist from an intelligence source. The guidebook says that to be deemed a terrorist target, quote, "irrefutable evidence or concrete facts are not necessary." Both "known" and "suspected" suspects are tracked, and terrorism is so broadly defined, it includes people accused of damaging property belonging to the government or financial institutions. Other factors that can justify inclusion include postings on social media or having a relative already deemed a terrorist. The guidebook’s criteria also apply to the no-fly list and selectee list. In a statement, Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union said, quote, "Instead of a watchlist limited to actual, known terrorists ... the government is secretly blacklisting people as suspected terrorists and giving them the impossible task of proving themselves innocent of a threat they haven’t carried out."
AMY GOODMAN: Democracy Now! invited the National Counterterrorism Center to join us on our program; they declined our request. A spokesperson sent us a statement that read in part: "Without speaking to the authenticity of the document referenced in the article, the watchlisting system is an important part of our layered defense to protect the United States against future terrorist attacks. ... Before an American may be included on a watchlist, additional layers of scrutiny are applied to ensure that the listing is appropriate," they said.
Well, for more, we’re joined by Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux of The Intercept. Their new article is headlined "The Secret Government Rulebook for Labeling You a Terrorist." Jeremy is also the producer and writer of the documentary film, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, and author of a book by the same name.
We welcome you both back to Democracy Now! Jeremy, first, how did you get a hold of this book?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I mean, we’re not going to discuss sources. Or, you know, the Obama administration likes to talk about sources and methods, and ironically now, journalists have to be very, very careful in protecting our sources and how we get information, so we’re not going to talk about the way that we got the document. But the document itself is something that has been fiercely and actively kept secret by the Obama administration, and the principles upon which this document is based were fiercely guarded, as well, by the Bush administration. In fact, Eric Holder went so far as to say, in a sworn affidavit in a court suit that was brought by an American citizen challenging their watchlisting status, that it’s a state secrets privilege covered, and that if this were to be released, it would provide a roadmap, essentially, for undermining the watchlisting system.
What we have here is tantamount to a system that’s sort of like a global stop-and-frisk program, because the standard for putting people on a list where they are going to be designated as known or suspected terrorists—the acronym is KST; you’re a KST, a known or suspected terrorist—and there’s no way of determining, if you’re a law enforcement official and you get this information, whether there’s actual evidence against someone to suggest that they’re involved with a terror plot or their phone number popped up in the phone of someone who is suspected of potentially being a terror suspect. The standard that they use to put people on this is what’s called "reasonable suspicion." We talked to former FBI agents, one of whom was a Los Angeles police officer for several decades, and he said, you know, "If I can’t find reasonable suspicion to stop anyone I want, then I’m not a good cop." And so, what they’re essentially doing is saying that if someone, not based on concrete facts or irrefutable evidence, but if someone within the intelligence community thinks someone is suspicious—maybe they’re posting something on Facebook, maybe they’re posting something on Twitter, that they think indicate that they have sympathies in favor of some sort of a jihadist group—let’s go ahead and designate them as a suspected terrorist.
Imagine what could happen, the implication of this, for all sorts of communities. But the way that Muslims, Arabs, Pakistanis, others in our society are targeted in this post-9/11 world, imagine if you are an Arab man and you have a beard, and you are driving your car in a rural community somewhere in the South in the United States, and you have a busted tail light, and a sheriff’s deputy pulls you over at night because of the busted tail light. The sheriff goes up, he takes your license, he goes back, and he runs it. He sees that he has someone that has been designated by the U.S. intelligence community as a known or suspected terrorist. What kind of danger is this individual going to be in now? And let’s say that it’s a case of mistaken identity, that he’s not actually a known or suspected terrorist, but he has the same name as someone, or his number popped up in someone else’s phone. The likelihood of that sheriff thinking he has a suicide bomber in the car is probably pretty high. And so, this could have real-life implications for the liberty and also life of people.
But in a broader sense, this designation can secretly be used in court proceedings. It can prevent you from getting employment. You can be designated as a representative of a terrorist organization, even if you are not affiliated with that terrorist organization. You can have a designation of being a part of a terrorist group, even if the U.S. government has not designated that group as a terrorist organization. The short of it is this, Amy: When you take the reasonable suspicion standard, which is like stop and frisk, where you say, "Oh, these kids look like they’re hanging out, up to no good. I’m going to go and frisk all of them right now," when you take that, and then you look at this wide-ranging definition of what constitutes terrorist activity, there is so much room open for massive violations of civil liberties.
The other component of this that Ryan and I discovered that I think bears a lot of scrutiny is that all of these principles, in this previously undisclosed watchlisting guidance, were shared in some form or another with at least—it’s 22 foreign governments, with a network of private contractors. The NCTC would not tell us the corporate entities that are given this information, nor would they tell us the foreign governments. Our government is sharing this information, including designating its own citizens as known or suspected terrorists, with all of these foreign states and with private entities, private contractors, and not sharing what amounts to a parallel shadow legal system where we’re not allowed to know the rules. We’re not allowed to know what it would be that we would do that would have our government secretly designate us as a known or suspected terrorist.
AARON MATÉ: Ryan, who decides the people that get on this list? And what are the implications for combating crime, having such broad criteria for inclusion?
RYAN DEVEREAUX: Well, the watchlisting community is composed, as Jeremy said, of foreign governments, private contractors, as well as a broad range of executive departments and agencies—obviously, CIA, FBI, you know, local law enforcement. All of them sort of work together to share information about people, known or suspected terrorists, and sort of disseminate that information broadly.
The law enforcement impacts and the counterterrorism impacts are actually really important to look at, because for years this system has been criticized in internal government reports, in the media, for gathering too much information, basically creating a haystack, a huge haystack, which makes it much more difficult to find the needle. So, basically, you have people within the watchlisting community complaining that they’re drowning in information. This is a criticism that’s surfaced again and again for years.
AMY GOODMAN: How many people are on the list?
RYAN DEVEREAUX: Well, it depends on what list you’re talking about. If you’re talking about the Terrorism Screening Database, which is the watchlist, it’s increased to several hundred thousand people over recent years. The TIDE database, which is the government’s largest repository for terrorism information—obviously, they keep these numbers secret—is much larger than the actual watchlist. And that information is kept classified.
AMY GOODMAN: The number, Jeremy, at the time of 9/11—
JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —on the list?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I mean, just, yeah, to give you a sense of how much this has grown, there was no such thing as the no-fly list when 9/11 happened. There were 16 people that were designated what they called "no transport," meaning that they were going to be prevented from flying on aircraft in the United States or coming to the United States. There were 16 people on that list. And now it’s exploded, and it’s reached its highest point under President Obama.
So, if you sort of think of it, what Ryan was describing is an inverse pyramid. You have this classified database that has all sorts of fragmentary information on people. It could be phone intercepts. It could be text messages, metadata, identities of people from a wide range of sources, some of them clandestine. So, in other words, the CIA or the NSA has hacked into a system or has accessed a database. And they have all of this information in there. Then, from that, they drill it down to what is traditionally known as the watchlist, as Ryan said, the Terrorist Screening Database, the TSDB. And everyone on that list is what is considered to be watchlisted, and it’s well into the hundreds of thousands. Then you drill down from that, and you have a selectee list. And those are people—and this has happened to me repeatedly—who are pulled aside for additional screening at the airport. And then you have the actual no-fly list. And the U.S. government, it’s been years since they gave anything resembling hard statistics on how many people are in each of these databases.
But when you have that kind of an encounter, if you are stopped because you’re on one of these lists, and you’re pulled aside, one of the things that we discovered in this document is that the so-called screeners, the people that are going to encounter you, either in person or they have some kind of digital contact with you—you’re applying for a visa, you’re applying for federal employment, or you’re applying for a grant from USAID, which is one of the more scandalous sort of little nuggest in this piece, that USAID is part of the system feeding intelligence back to entities like the CIA, the NSA and others, that have to do with their grants that are supposedly about promoting democracy—you know, USAID has a long history of working as a front for the CIA, of course, but, you know, this part of it wasn’t known. And USAID confirmed to us that they do in fact participate in this program.
AMY GOODMAN: So, wait, explain what they would do.
JEREMY SCAHILL: So, someone goes in—I mean, this is according to what USAID also told us. I mean, in the document, it says that USAID has its own intelligence analysts that are stationed with the watchlisting community that is governing this whole system and that they are collecting data from people that are applying for grants, for contractors that they’re working with. I mean, of course they’re going to do diligence, you know, to make sure that the people that they’re giving grants to are not terrorists. I mean, there’s nothing scandalous about that. The idea, though, that USAID is then taking this information, that it gets from people who are applying for something having to do with, you know, agriculture in India, and then translating that into information that could be used to designate people as known or suspected terrorists, means that USAID is not some kind of impartial pro-democracy entity, that it’s actively engaged in a system of putting people on watchlists that are based on flimsy legal standards of evidence.
But the point I was getting at here is, among the items that can be copied, collected, noted are the condition of books in your car, whether they’re dog-eared and worn, are there notations in it; your E-ZPass; veterinary information, including the electronic chips in your pets; your health insurance information, your health cards. We’ve gone through and looked at this over and over. The message that’s sent to people who are so-called screeners is basically: There’s no such thing as the Fourth Amendment, if you have someone who’s on one of these lists. We want—take it all. Collect it all. I mean, this should be a scandal in Congress. The tea party should be up in arms about this for all that they’ve said about the TSA and, you know, Obama who’s like Chairman Mao in power. Where are they on this issue? Where are the tea party senators and congresspeople on the issue that we are essentially empowering a whole network of people, including private contractors, to actively violate our Fourth Amendment rights against illegal search and seizure.
RYAN DEVEREAUX: And one thing to add there—Jeremy’s talking about encounters here—while this system may not be perfect for countering terrorism, it’s very, very useful for creating situations in which law enforcement, in which FBI agents can have somebody who’s sitting in a room waiting to travel, waiting to get on their way, and they’re there. The FBI can now use this person as a potential informant and in an attempt to flip them. There was a huge report that came out last week about the FBI using informants for its counterterrorism cases. This sort of system creates situations in which people have to deal with law enforcement and have to face the governmnet.
AARON MATÉ: Well, in April, Democracy Now! spoke with Naveed Shinwari, one of the four American Muslims who filed a lawsuit accusing the FBI of unjustly placing them on the no-fly list and trying to coerce them to spy on their community. He explained what happened to him.
NAVEED SHINWARI: Late February of 2012, I got—I was trying to obtain a boarding pass in Dubai. My flight was from Kabul to Dubai and then to Houston. And I was denied boarding pass in Dubai. I was told that I had to go outside and meet with the immigration, U.S. immigrations, or the embassy, consulate. I had to obtain a temporary visa. And my mother and I, we went out, out of the airport. And then I was interrogated by two FBI agents for roughly about four hours, and I was told to—I was pressured to give them everything that I knew in order to go back home. And then they will—the more that I give them, the better chances of me coming back home that I had.
AARON MATÉ: That’s Naveed Shinwari speaking on Democracy Now! Ryan, in June, there was a court ruling saying that the no-fly list is unconstitutional.
RYAN DEVEREAUX: Yeah, and wholly ineffective. Basically, what the judge ruled here was that the process for getting off of these lists was unconstitutional and wholly ineffective, and that’s because there’s essentially no way for you to confirm whether you’re on a list, and the process by which you get off is done internally. You just basically submit a form through the Department of Homeland Security, and that’s bounced around within these agencies. Now, if there are multiple agencies who have contributed information on your file, then all of those agencies have to agree that you should be removed. And when you’re removed, you don’t get any notification whatsoever.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the threat-based upgrade, the TBU?
RYAN DEVEREAUX: Yeah, this was one of the most striking elements of this guidance, to us, in reviewing it. Basically, the threat-based upgrade is an amazing power vested in a senior White House administration official who has not been elected to their position, and it affords that official the authority to upgrade the watchlisting status of an entire category of people for up to 72 hours without any—without conferring with any of their peers. And then that upgrade can be continued for another 30 days upon review by a circle—Obama’s basically inner circle. And that upgrade can continue on a sort of rolling status. It can be renewed until the intelligence community determines that whatever threat is out there, whatever threat that they’ve detected, is gone. Now, we asked the government about what constitutes a category, but we were given no information. We do know that this has been used, though, and it seemed to be directed at people from a given area, of a certain age range.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Like military-age males in Yemen. It’s worth pointing out, too, you know, one of the greatest, unelected, non-Senate-confirmed power grabs in recent American history was enacted by John Brennan. John Brennan—when Obama was first elected, he wanted Brennan to be the CIA director. And some Democrats actually had a spine back then and said, you know, "Because of his involvement in the Bush torture apparatus and some of his positions on torture and other things, we’re going to hold up that nomination." So they created a post specifically for John Brennan, so that he could effectively serve as the czar in charge of all of these policies, when it came to counterterrorism, homeland security and others, and basically was running the show. He became, you know, the drone kingpin and all of these things. This position was created essentially by John Brennan for John Brennan, this threat-based upgrade, so he then gave himself, because he was in charge of doing the watchlisting guidance and coordinating it—he gave himself this power to just unilaterally upgrade an entire category of people. I mean, and as Ryan said, we tried to understand how they define "category" in this, and they wouldn’t say to us. The best that we have on the record is Pete Williams of NBC News, in a follow-up story about this—
AMY GOODMAN: Former spokesperson for the Pentagon.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Former spokesperson for the Pentagon, right, Pete Williams. But he actually did a pretty solid report on this, and he—it’s a minor note in his story, but he’s the one who said, the specific example, that it could be males of a certain age from a certain area of Yemen. So, and as Ryan said, there is nothing democratic about this process at all. Courts are not involved with this. There is no review of your watchlist status by an outside body. It’s all internal oversight.
AMY GOODMAN: So, we have 30 seconds. How do you get off of this list, if you’re constantly stopped, if you understand you’re on this list?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, if you would ask the government, they would say, "Well, we have this thing called the DHS TRIP program, and if you think that you may be on this list, you submit it. And trust us. We’ll review it, and if your status is inappropriate, you’re not going to get stopped anymore in the airport." In reality, it’s almost impossible to get off of this list. I mean, I don’t want to talk about future reporting that Ryan and I are doing, but we’re staying on this beat, and we’ve learned information that indicates that even if you think you’re removed from the list, you may end up on another part of the list. I mean, once you get sucked into the vortex of the watchlisting system, it’s almost impossible to come back up for air. You’re stuck.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux, thank you so much, staff reporters with The Intercept. Their new article, "The Secret Government Rulebook for Labeling You a Terrorist." When we come back, "With Liberty to Monitor All: How Large-Scale U.S. Surveillance Is Harming Journalism, Law, and American Democracy." Stay with us.
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The Palestinian death toll has topped 1,100 after one of the deadliest 24-hour periods since the Israeli assault on Gaza began 22 days ago. Most of the dead have been civilians. More than 180,000 Palestinians have been displaced over the past three weeks — that is roughly 10 percent of the population of Gaza. We are joined from Gaza City by award-winning Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer. "I believe Israel wants to make people turn against the resistance," Omer says. "There is no way for people to turn against the resistance — in fact it is the other way around. People in the street say we do support resistance because that is the only way to end the occupation. ... I’m afraid we are going to have more radical generations in the Gaza Strip, and I fear for the future of Gaza and the future of the West Bank — and I fear the future of the region if the international community is not acting now to end the blockade and the operation in Gaza."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: As we continue to cover Gaza, we’ll be joined by the Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer in a moment. But first let’s turn to the British broadcaster Jon Snow of Channel 4. He recently returned from Gaza. He made this emotional appeal for people to consider the children caught in the conflict.
JON SNOW: What I never knew is what I know now, which is that those people who live in Gaza are mainly the unbelievably young. The average age is 17. That means that about quarter of a million are under 10. There was one specific moment that stood out above all others, and that was penetrating the third floor of the Shifa Hospital, one of two floors dedicated to children. That’s where I met Maha, terribly crippled by shrapnel that had penetrated her spine. That’s where I saw this little two-and-a-half-year-old with panda-sized, huge, suppurating, round, panda-like wounds that almost prevented her eyes opening at all. They were the consequence of a broken skull and a fractured nose. I can’t get those images out of my mind. I don’t think you can either, because they’ve been everywhere. They are the essence of what is happening in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: British broadcaster Jon Snow. We go now to Gaza City, where we’re joined by Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer. In 2008, he won the Martha Gellhorn Prize, honored as, quote, "the voice of the voiceless," and his reports were described as a, quote, "humane record of the injustice imposed on a community forgotten by much of the world."
Mohammed Omer, welcome back to Democracy Now! This was the most intensive bombing period, the last 24 hours. You are not only a journalist, you are a resident of Gaza. You are Palestinian. Talk about what happened over this last day.
MOHAMMED OMER: OK. Thank you, Amy. What has happened in Gaza is absolutely terrifying. In my last 29 years living in the Gaza Strip, this is the worst night, by no comparison. This is the worst night. And what is really most scary, that before, I used to tell people, "Well, try to avoid areas where Hamas residents or Hamas people are living," but nowadays I changed my theory, and I started to tell people to try to avoid places where children are located. Israel is targeting children in the Gaza Strip. Most of the airstrikes, most of the bombs, most of the artillery shelling that targets people is mostly children in all parts of the Gaza Strip.
I’ll focus a little bit on the humanitarian side, since Sharif focused more on the other side of the—on the ground, on what’s happening. And nowadays, if you see in my background at this moment, the only power plant in Gaza is bombed. If that means something, it means, according to officials, that we will have about one year of no electricity and no light, if they are not able to solve the crisis soon. Rafah crossing is closed. There is nowhere to hide. There is nowhere to run to, unlike many places or war zones. The humanitarian crises are growing in the Gaza Strip. The people in Khan Younis and Rafah are unable to make phone calls. The massacre this morning at al-Najar family, where 18 family members were killed, was a catastrophe, and people were not able to make one single phone call to call an ambulance or rescue teams to evacuate the bodies under the ground.
The situation, as it is, is quite deteriorating. I’m afraid it’s going to get even much worse in the coming hours. As I’ve said, the target is mostly children. We hear bombs now and then, and we hear more casualties and more people who are being bombed. I don’t know if you hear right now in the background, but there is more bombing that is happening at the moment as I speak.
AARON MATÉ: Mohammed, we first spoke to you three weeks ago, just as the bombing was beginning. What has this period been like for you?
MOHAMMED OMER: You know, one of the things which strikes me is to see the spirits of people in Gaza. It’s quite high, and they are very strong, and they are ready to go. But the human cost is great. The damages that are caused to human beings are quite great. I’m a father of a child, and I know what it feels to be a father of a child. You have all the time to think about the safety of your family, constantly, because the Israeli F-16 bombings can target anywhere, basically, and the same with the tank shells and the Israeli gunboats. You have the Israeli gunboats from the west of the city, you have from the east of the city also the tank shells, and you have F-16s and the drones hovering over your heads 24/7, 24/7 in the Gaza Strip under constant bombing. Last night, it was nine to 10 hours of constant bombing that did not stop. That means there is nothing else you can do except to wait the moment where you die, basically.
AMY GOODMAN: In a comment to close the CBS News show Face the Nation Sunday, host Bob Schieffer suggested Hamas forces Israel to murder Palestinian children.
BOB SCHIEFFER: In the Middle East, the Palestinian people find themselves in the grip of a terrorist group that is embarked on a strategy to get its own children killed in order to build sympathy for its cause—a strategy that might actually be working, at least in some quarters. Last week I found a quote of many years ago by Golda Meir, one of Israel’s early leaders, which might have been said yesterday: "We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children," she said, "but we can never forgive them for forcing us to kill their children."
AMY GOODMAN: That was CBS’s Bob Schieffer. Mohammed Omer, could you respond?
MOHAMMED OMER: I mean, this has been all the time the policy, basically to target civilians and to target people who are defenseless. I mean, if you look at the cases of people who are killed, just it’s—I would like to invite President Obama just one single hour at the Shifa Hospital to see the cases and the people who are killed. Those are people who are killed by U.S. taxpayers’ money. This is the bombs that are falling on people’s homes when they are trying to sleep or when they are trying to seek a shelter. This is one of the most terrifying wars where I have been covering as a journalist and as also a national living in the Gaza Strip.
This is a policy which Israel is knowing what they are doing. I believe that Israel, what they wanted to do is to make people turn against the resistance. Now, of course, there is no way that people can turn against the resistance. In fact, it’s the other way around. You find the people in the street who say, "We do support resistance, because that’s the only way to end the occupation." People feel that they are disowned by the rest of the world, particularly the Arab world. People feel that they are not being cared for by the international community, which is rightfully so. If you look at Ban Ki-moon visit, Ban Ki-moon went to a lot of places in Israel, while Gaza is about less than an hour. He did not come to Gaza to see the real destruction. I mean, he was coming here for a ceasefire, but there was no way that he can do a ceasefire without involving a direct talk with Hamas. The people who are part of the problem, and they should be part of the solution, have been all the time ignored.
And there is no way that I can go to see this is going to end any time soon, because the international community refuse to talk to Hamas. But the bombing is going to continue. More killing is going to continue. And the humanitarian crises are going to grow even further. If that’s going to grow further, then we don’t know who is going to be the next. Is it going to be me who’s killed? Is it going to be one of my family members? Is it going to be one of my friends? You really don’t know. And what’s new in Gaza, that nowadays you really don’t know who is being killed, even in your next—your neighbor. The ambulance crew take a long time to get inside to evacuate bodies, because it’s just not possible for them to move. There is so much demands on rescue teams, who are unable to remove in and outside of the cities and the camps and the villages.
What is happening is beyond imagination. I never thought that Israel—and I would hear Israeli officials commenting on how they justify killing children. All the time, they say that Hamas is using civilians as shields. Well, OK, I take this argument, but tell me how many Hamas members are killed. Not so many. Seventy-seven percent of the population are actually—who were killed, are civilians, according to the United Nations. I argue it’s more, because even if you target somebody who is affiliated to Hamas, wearing a jalabiya and sleeping with his children, I don’t believe this is a military target.
AARON MATÉ: Mohammed, we have 30 seconds. The main issue for Hamas is ending the blockade of Gaza. Can you talk about why this is such a critical issue for Gazans who are willing to sacrifice their lives for the siege to be lifted?
MOHAMMED OMER: Remember that this is not a demand by Hamas. This is also a demand by the international community. The U.N. have always called on Israel to lift the blockade, to open the borders and make life possible. To lift the blockade, it’s pretty easy. It’s a pretty easy equation here. Israel will have to open the border. If you remember, in January 2008, when Palestinians knocked down the wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, there was not one single rocket that was fired into Israel. If that indicates to you something, it shows that Palestinians just want open borders, and they want lifting the blockade, and they want to enjoy their life, like the rest of the neighbors. And Israel is not giving the chance for the Palestinians to basically get in and outside of the Gaza Strip.
I’m afraid that we are going to have more radical generations in the Gaza Strip, and I fear the future of Gaza, and I fear the future of the West Bank, and I fear the future of the region, if the international community is not acting now to end the blockade and to end the aggression in Gaza and to make sure that people are safe and secure. There is nowhere safe. There is nowhere secure. We are being bombed constantly by Israeli F-16s and tank shells. And the international community is waiting. We are—the way the international community is dealing with the Gazans is unfortunately as numbers. Now it’s 1,200 people who were killed. That’s only a number. But each one of these numbers is a story. Each one of them is a memory. Each one of them is a whole narrative that we need to understand. We need to see the people. I have been to the cemetery yesterday, where a mother was screaming over the body of her son. And why? Because Israel targeted one of the graveyards, and she was collecting the bones of her own son who was killed some years ago. Imagine, if that’s something that’s happening anywhere in the world, what the reaction of the international community would be. But because it’s in Gaza, there is no reaction.
AMY GOODMAN: Mohammed Omer, I want to thank you for being with us, award-winning Palestinian journalist, reporting to us from his home in Gaza City. You can follow his reports on Twitter. He is standing against the backdrop of his city, of Gaza City. In the background, you can see the power plant that is still smoking from the Israeli military attack over the last 24 hours. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté.
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Despite a U.N. Security Council call for a ceasefire, Israel has intensified its attack on Gaza and warned of a "protracted campaign." Palestinian officials say more than 110 people have been killed in the past 24 hours, with some saying Monday was the most intensive night of bombing so far. In this time period, Israel attacked more than 150 sites including Gaza’s only power station and a media center that houses the broadcasting headquarters of Hamas and a number of other Arab satellite news channels. Earlier on Monday, 10 people were killed, eight of which were children, and 40 others wounded by an explosion in a park near the beach in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City. The child victims were said to be playing on a playground swing when they were hit. Israel denied carrying out the attack, but eyewitnesses said the explosion was caused by an Israeli airstrike. Another Israeli bombing reportedly hit an outpatient building at al-Shifa, Gaza’s main hospital. Meanwhile, 10 Israeli soldiers were killed on Monday. Fifty-three Israeli soldiers, two Israeli civilians and a Thai farmworker have died since the assault began. We go to Gaza City to speak with Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous. "[Israel has] shelled hospitals, U.N. schools, they’ve bombed people in their homes," Kouddous says. "There’s literally nowhere for these people to run to."
Image Credit: Sharif Abdel Kouddous
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: Despite a U.N. Security Council call for a ceasefire, Israel has intensified its attack on Gaza and warned of a "protracted campaign." Palestinian officials say more than 110 people have been killed in the past 24 hours, bringing the Palestinian death toll to over 1,100 since the assault began 22 days ago. Most of the dead have been civilians. Monday was said to be the most intensive night of bombing so far. More than 180,000 Palestinians have been displaced over the past three weeks. That’s roughly 10 percent of the population of Gaza. Meanwhile, 10 Israeil soldiers were killed on Monday. Fifty-three Israeli soldiers, two Israeli civilians and a Thai farmworker have died in the past three weeks.
AMY GOODMAN: Israel bombed more than 150 sites last night, including Gaza’s only power station and a media center that houses the broadcasting headquarters of Hamas and a number of other Arab satellite news channels. Also Monday, 10 people, including eight children, were killed and 40 others wounded by an explosion in a park near the beach in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City. The child victims were said to be playing on a playground swing when they were hit. Israel denied carrying out the attack, but eyewitnesses said the explosion was caused by an Israel airstrike. Another Israeli bombing reportedly hit an outpatient building at al-Shifa, Gaza’s main hospital.
We go directly to Gaza City to speak with Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who’s just written a piece for The Nation on the Al-Shati refugee camp strike.
Sharif, you recently came from there. Can you tell us what happened?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Amy, yesterday at about 4:30 p.m., while there was children playing in the street in the Shati refugee camp, there was an airstrike, and several eyewitnesses debunked claims that Israel is saying that this was an errant militant rocket. And all the eyewitnesses say the same thing: There was a very loud explosion, and these children, that were playing on a swing and running between a grocery shop and buying sweets as they were celebrating a period of relative calm for the Muslim holiday of Eid, were blown apart. People talked of very bloody scenes of kids on the floor, arms missing, heads blasted in. Ten people were killed. Eight of them were children. According to the Health Ministry, 40 were injured. Over 30 of them were children. In Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, it was really tragic scenes, men openly weeping, women screaming, children being wheeled on stretchers. And this really blew apart this—what appeared to be a relative winding down of the violence.
And overnight, as you mentioned, it was some of the fiercest bombardment that Gaza has witnessed over this three-week war. If you just look behind me, you can see Gaza’s power plant that is on fire. It was hit in an airstrike last night. The fuel depot in the power plant was set alight. This power plant provides about 30 percent of Gaza’s electricity, and already most Gazans get about four hours or less of electricity a day. Electricity is very crucial also to the pump stations for water, and Gazans are suffering a very severe water crisis. This power station was hit also last week. The Israeli military claimed it was an errant strike by a shell, but it was certainly hit today. Dozens of places were hit last night: three mosques, four factories, as you mentioned, the house of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, as well as several factories.
And we saw in the evening, as well, that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced that this would be a protracted war. This came after Palestinian militants killed five Israeli soldiers after tunneling through on the other side of the border. So, we’re already on day 22 of this assault. It appears it’s going to be longer than the 2008-2009 brutal Israeli attack on Gaza. And we heard the prime minister, Netanyahu, say there’s no war more just than this. And this came after this brutal attack on the Shati refugee camp that, again, left children being the primary victims of this war.
One of the people that was killed in that attack, one of the two adults, was a 63-year-old named Sobhi al-Helw. He had been displaced from Shejaiya, the neighborhood in East Gaza City, and he had left his home after it was bombed by the Israeli military, killing his mother, 78 years old. And he had fled to this neighborhood in West Gaza to avoid the Israeli bombing. He brought with him 13 members of his family. And despite that, he died yesterday in this attack. So it’s not just that civilians are being killed by these Israeli bombs, but it’s civilians who are trying to flee these Israeli bombs are also dying.
And the Israeli military last night sent out recorded messages to residents in various neighborhoods—eastern Jabaliya, Beit Lahia, Zeitoun—telling them to evacuate their homes. This is after already 44 percent of the Gaza Strip has been declared a military buffer zone. There is literally nowhere for people to go. There’s over 200,000 displaced, by the U.N.'s own count. If you go to homes in Gaza, you'll find people, dozens of people, sitting in apartments. They’re in unfinished schools. UNRWA is hosting over 170,000 people. There’s literally nowhere for people to go, and it seems there’s nowhere safe for Gazans to be.
AARON MATÉ: Sharif, as we said, the al-Shifa Hospital was among the targets on Monday. You’ve been to the hospitals almost every day. What’s the scene like inside?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, the Shifa Hospital has really transformed into a makeshift refugee camp. It’s seen by many as the safest place in Gaza. It’s the biggest hospital, and it’s a place of refuge. It’s a place where the dead and wounded are sent, but also a place for people who have been—are evacuating their homes. There’s many, many people, from especially Shejaiya, who are sleeping there day and night, in the grassy area and on the sidewalk in Shifa Hospital.
And there was an attack yesterday on an adjoining outpatient clinic where two people were injured and that blew out part of a wall. And some think it was a warning by the Israeli military. This is a place where you can go and speak to Hamas spokespeople. They’re often there where you can interview them. But the Israeli military claims that, again, it was an errant Palestinian rocket that hit that site.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, is there any way for people to leave, for example, journalists to leave Gaza?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, the Erez border crossing—that’s the crossing in Israel out of Gaza—was opened today. Several journalists did leave, and several journalists come in. Some days it is closed. But for Palestinians, there is no way out. This isn’t a war like others, where—you know, in Iraq or other places, where refugees can flee across a border to a place of relative safety. Here, they can’t. The borders are controlled mostly by Israel and also by Egypt, and those borders are sealed to Palestinians. And so there’s nowhere for them to go. The Israeli military is pushing in from its border, and as I said, it’s created a three-kilometer military buffer zone, and it’s pushing people into the center and the west of Gaza. And as we’ve seen, they’ve shelled hospitals, they’ve shelled U.N. schools, they’ve bombed people in their homes. So there’s literally nowhere for people to run to.
AARON MATÉ: Sharif, on Monday, a former Israeli soldier, who’s now a peace activist with the group Breaking the Silence, revealed that Israeli snipers have been shooting dead Palestinians in Gaza as an act of revenge for the killing of their fellow soldiers. In a post on Facebook, Eran Efrati cited reports he’s received from soldiers in the Gaza Strip. Efrati refers specifically to a shooting that was caught on video of a Palestinian man, Salem Shammaly, shot dead as he looked for family members in Shejaiya. Efrati writes, quote, "I can report that the official command handed down to the soldiers in Shujaiyya was to capture Palestinian homes as outposts. From these posts, the soldiers drew an imaginary red line, and amongst themselves decided to shoot to death anyone who crosses it. ... This was the official reasoning inside the units. I was told that the unofficial reason was to enable the soldiers to take out their frustrations and pain at losing their fellow soldiers out on the Palestinian refugees in the neighborhood." Sharif, have you heard any accounts of these sniper attacks on Palestinians in Shejaiya, where of course 72 people were killed in one of the worst attacks so far?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, residents who were fleeing the area did speak of snipers, and of course there is that video where activists with the International Solidarity Movement were accompanying a young Palestinian man as he was looking for his family. It’s all caught on tape. He’s shot. He falls to the ground. And then he’s shot another time, and then another bullet rings out which misses him. And he died in that attack. I spoke with one of the ISM activists, and she described in great detail about the sniper attack. The family of that young Palestinian man was not in Shejaiya, it turned out. They had fled. And they found out about his death by watching the video online. And that is how they found out that he had died looking for them. So, it’s these scenes of tragedy that we always hear. And the targeting of civilians has occurred since the beginning of this war. They have paid the highest price. By the U.N.’s count, over 77 percent of the dead are civilian, and over 220 children have died.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, I want to thank you for being with us. Be safe. When we come back, we’ll be joined by another journalist, by Mohammed Omer. It may take a minute for them to make the transition at the standup point in Gaza City, because Sharif has to take off his bulletproof vest, and Mohammed Omer must put it on. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. We’ll be back in a minute.
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In a new report, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union warn that "large-scale surveillance is seriously hampering U.S.-based journalists and lawyers in their work." The report is based on interviews with dozens of reporters and lawyers. They describe a media climate where journalists take cumbersome security steps that slows down their reporting. Sources are afraid of talking, as aggressive prosecutions scare government officials into staying silent, even about issues that are unclassified. For lawyers, the threat of surveillance is stoking fears they will be unable to protect a client’s right to privacy. Some defendants are afraid of speaking openly to their own counsel, undermining a lawyer’s ability provide the best possible defense. We speak to Alex Sinha, author of the report, "With Liberty to Monitor All: How Large-Scale U.S. Surveillance Is Harming Journalism, Law, and American Democracy," and to national security reporter Jeremy Scahill.
Image Credit: HRW/ACLU
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: It’s been over a year since Edward Snowden exposed mass surveillance by the NSA. Now comes the most comprehensive look to date at how unchecked government spying is impacting two fields we all rely on to curb abuses of power and defend basic rights. The results are chilling. In a new report, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union warn "large-scale surveillance is seriously hampering U.S.-based journalists and lawyers in their work." The report is based on interviews with dozens of reporters and lawyers. This is Brian Ross, chief investigative correspondent for ABC News.
BRIAN ROSS: We sometimes feel—or I feel, at least—like you’re operating like somebody in the Mafia. You’ve got to go around with a bag full of quarters and, if you can find a pay phone, use it, or use, like drug dealers use, you know, throwaway burner phones. These are all the steps that we have to take to get rid of an electronic trail. To have to take those kind of steps makes journalists feel like we’re criminals and like we’re doing something wrong. And I don’t think we are. I think we’re providing a useful service to Americans to know what’s going on in their government and what’s happening.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s ABC’s Brian Ross. For lawyers, the threat of surveillance is stoking fears they will be unable to protect a client’s right to privacy. Some defendants are afraid of speaking openly to their own counsel, undermining a lawyer’s ability to provide the best possible defense. Human Rights Watch and the ACLU conclude this climate "undermines press freedom, the public’s right to information, and the right to counsel, all human rights essential [to] a healthy democracy."
Well, for more, we’re joined by Alex Sinha, author of the report, "With Liberty to Monitor All: How Large-Scale U.S. Surveillance Is Harming Journalism, Law, and American Democracy." He’s the Aryeh Neier fellow at Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. Still with us, longtime national security reporter Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept.
Talk about what you found.
ALEX SINHA: Sure. I think the most remarkable thing we have here is we finally have documentation of concrete harms that flow from large-scale surveillance. I mean, we’ve been having this debate in the country over the last year about what surveillance means for the society and what we should do about it, but we focus a lot on abstract harms to privacy. And while those are important, as well, I think it’s really helpful to have something to point to, to say, "Look, this is what we’re losing. Journalists are losing sources, and so less information reaches the public. Attorneys are losing the ability to be secure in their communications, and that undermines their ability to represent their clients."
AMY GOODMAN: Give us examples.
ALEX SINHA: So, I mean, I had many attorneys talk about how they feel obligated to warn their clients that their communications are not actually confidential, that there’s a chance that somebody could pick up what they’re saying, and therefore that in order to build their case strategy or in order to exchange basic facts about their case, they need to meet in person, they need to do it in a certain way that’s secure. The journalists reported similar things, that instead of using conventional methods of connecting to sources—emails, phone calls, whatever—you have to contrive a way to bump into a person, you know, meet them face to face, find a way to do that without leaving an electronic trail to set up the meeting in the first place, and which is really slowing down the reporters.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to another journalist that Human Rights Watch and the ACLU spoke to for this report: Jonathan Landay, national security reporter for McClatchy. These are some of the concerns he expressed.
JONATHAN LANDAY: What we found out through the Snowden disclosures is that the United States government is collecting all of our metadata, which shows who your social and professional networks are, who your connections are, where you are at a particular time, where perhaps a source is. They don’t need to know what you were talking about. They’ve got enough to be able to go to your source and say, "Why were you talking to this journalist?"
When it comes to protecting a source, I’ve had to teach myself, you know, using encryption engine, this kind of thing. I don’t take my iPhone with me when I go to meet a source. Unless you take the battery out, you can still be tracked. I was leaked classified intelligence community documents last year that cataloged quite a few years of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan. I went to considerable lengths to protect my source, and I’m not going to tell you what I did.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Jonathan Landay of McClatchy. Alex Sinha, you can’t take a battery out of your iPhone.
ALEX SINHA: I believe that’s why he tends to leave it behind, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: And Jeremy Scahill?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I mean, look, all of us that are doing this kind of reporting—you know, and I read in the report, my colleague Adam Goldman, who’s a fantastic reporter at The Washington Post, said, you know, we’re forced to sort of act like we’re spies. And we’re not spies. We’re journalists. And we shouldn’t be forced to do all this. But there’s a war on journalism around the world, and in some countries it comes in the form of journalists being murdered. Here, it comes in the form of our communications being surveilled, phone records being seized, our communications being monitored.
You know, there’s something that’s a little bit funny about this, but it’s also creepy. When we spoke to the National Counterterrorism Center the other day, one of the things they said early on in the call is, "Jeremy, we know you’ve been making a bunch of phone calls throughout Washington, D.C., today." And I’m like, "Well, I mean, thank you for acknowledging that," but it’s like—you know, I mean, I think that they basically—the Obama administration’s posture is that only state propaganda belongs in the public domain, and if you want to cultivate your own sources and you want to challenge assertions made by officials in Washington by developing your own sources, we’re going to go after you with the full extent of the law.
AARON MATÉ: Alex, do any of the NSA reform bills currently before Congress do anything to address the concerns in your report?
ALEX SINHA: Well, so the USA FREEDOM Act, that was passed by the House, does almost nothing that we would like to see. The debate in the Senate, I understand, is potentially better. There’s a bill being kicked around there that might be stronger. What we’d like to see is an end to large-scale collection of metadata, and we’d like to see a bill that has no data retention mandate. And I haven’t seen the language of the current Senate bill, so I’m not sure if that’s in there.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, Alex.
ALEX SINHA: Sure. So, Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act has been used by the government for the last few years to collect large, just massive numbers of domestic phone call records, among other things. And so, this is one of the things that many of the journalists, in particular, are worried about, that in theory, the government has access to detailed records that show who they’re calling, when they’re calling, how long they’ve spoken. And in the case of a leak investigation or even just an internal investigation at some federal agency, it’s enough for the government to know: "OK, you were talking to journalist X. Why were you talking to journalist X? Why didn’t you tell us about this? And what were you saying?"
JEREMY SCAHILL: If you want to read something really, really interesting—I mean, it’s too much detail to get into right now—go online and find the warrant that was served on Google for the emails of James Rosen of Fox News, who of course he was leaked information, allegedly, by a federal employee who is now serving a prison sentence. But if you read what the government did to justify seizing all of James Rosen’s Gmail—not his Fox News account, his Gmail—it’s incredible. They basically said—and they knew that this wasn’t true—that James Rosen is basically in a conspiracy to commit a very, very serious crime, and we need to get all of his emails. Now, James Rosen was also an imbecile in how he dealt with his source, and that’s clear in that warrant. Read that warrant. It’s chilling for press freedom.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. Jeremy Scahill with The Intercept and Alex Sinha, the author of the report, "With Liberty to Monitor All: How Large-Scale U.S. Surveillance Is Harming Journalism, Law, and American Democracy." He’s at the ACLU and Human Rights Watch.
That does it for our broadcast. We have a job opening here at Democracy Now!, an on-air graphic designer and CG operator. Visit democracynow.org for information.
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Israel has intensified its assault on the Gaza Strip, bombing more than 150 sites overnight including Gaza’s only power station. Palestinian health officials say more than 110 people have died in 24 hours, bringing the Palestinian death toll to more than 1,100. Fifty-three Israeli soldiers have been reported killed, including 10 on Monday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned of a "protracted campaign" against Hamas even as the United Nations has called for an immediate end to violence "in the name of humanity."
Among those killed Monday were 10 people, including eight children, who died in an explosion in a park near the beach in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City. Israel denied responsibility, but eyewitnesses said the explosion came from an Israeli airstrike. An aunt of one of the victims said five of the children killed were from the same family.
Faiza Abu Amira: "Our young children were playing on the swings when a rocket hit them and tore them apart on the floor, five children from the same family. All of them died, one of them my nephew. What does Israel want from us for it to do this to our children?"
Protests both supporting and condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza have continued around the world, including here in New York City. On Monday, an estimated 10,000 Israeli government supporters rallied near the United Nations. Among the attendees were members of New York’s congressional delegation, including U.S. Democratic Rep. Steve Israel, who said he is sending the U.N. a letter signed by more than 100 lawmakers to demand it not investigate Israel for war crimes. Nearby, a group of Jewish-American peace activists gathered to read the names of those killed in Gaza, outside the office of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, a coalition of about 50 Jewish groups, including the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. Nine people were arrested after sitting down in front of the entrance, including Joshua Leifer.
Joshua Leifer: "Part of the history of the Jewish people is being victims of oppression, but that also means that we are obligated to fight against oppression wherever we find that. We’re free, we have a Jewish state, but our liberation isn’t complete until everyone else is liberated."
Fighting in eastern Ukraine has prevented a team of international investigators from reaching the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 for the third day in a row. According to Reuters, at least 19 civilians have died in the latest round of violence. A U.N. tally Monday showed about 800 civilians have been killed since mid-April when Ukraine launched an offensive to oust the rebels. The latest clashes come as the United States and European Union are poised to impose the harshest sanctions to date against Russia for its support of the rebels, whom they accuse of shooting down the plane with Russian-supplied missiles. Europe could unveil its sanctions against Russia’s financial, technology and arms industries as early as today. Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken says the United States will follow suit.
Tony Blinken: "We expect the European Union to take significant additional steps this week, including in key sectors of the Russian economy. In turn, and in full coordination with Europe, the United States will implement additional measures itself. Our purpose here, again, is not to punish Russia, but to make clear that it must cease its support for the separatists and stop destabilizing Ukraine."
In another escalation of U.S.-Russia tensions, the United States has accused Russia of violating a Cold War-era arms treaty by testing a ground-launched cruise missile that is banned under the 1987 accord. The New York Times reports Russia began testing the missile as far back as 2008.
In Afghanistan, a cousin and key ally of outgoing President Hamid Karzai has been killed in a suicide bomb attack in the southern city of Kandahar. Hashmat Karzai served as a campaign manager for Ashraf Ghani, one of two candidates in Afghanistan’s disputed presidential election. Preliminary results showed Ghani won the vote, but his opponent Abdullah Abdullah has claimed fraud, and a U.S.-brokered audit is underway.
The news comes as a new report has found the Pentagon failed to adequately track hundreds of thousands of weapons sent to Afghanistan, raising concerns they may be in the hands of militants. The report by the U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan found that in one database, more than 200,000 weapons — or 43 percent — had missing or duplicate information. It also found the United States supplied far more weapons than Afghanistan requested or needed.
In Syria, more than 2,000 people have reportedly died in one of the deadliest two-week periods of the three-year civil war. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports nearly half the dead are forces loyal to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Assad’s forces have faced an increasing challenge from the Islamic State, a Sunni extremist group that has seized key cities in Iraq and is also battling moderate Syrian rebels.
West Africa is facing the worst outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in history. Since February, more than 1,200 people have been infected in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea; 672 have died. Liberia has shut its borders, banned funerals and other large gatherings and is considering quarantining certain neighborhoods. One of Liberia’s top doctors died of Ebola over the weekend, and two U.S. healthcare workers in Liberia have also fallen ill. Steve Monroe, deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, confirmed the infections in a conference call.
Stephan Monroe: "Two American healthcare workers at a hospital in Monrovia, Liberia, have been infected with Ebola virus. One of the healthcare workers, a physician who worked with Ebola patients in the hospital, is symptomatic and is in isolation. The other healthcare worker developed fever, but no other signs of illness. No Ebola cases have been reported in the United States, and the likelihood of this outbreak spreading outside of West Africa is very low."
A U.S. citizen died of Ebola on Friday in the Nigerian city of Lagos after arriving there by plane from Liberia, marking the first recorded case in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. Ebola is highly infectious, has no known cure and can kill up to 90 percent of those afflicted.
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"A Venerable Jewish Voice for Peace" by Amy Goodman
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