Coming
in September
From AK Press
Featuring Essays by:
Edward Said, Robert Fisk, Michael Neumann, Shahid Alam, Alexander
Cockburn, Uri Avnery, Bill and Kathy Christison and More
Today's
Stories
August 14, 2003
Peter Phillips
Inside
Bohemian Grove: Where US Power Elites Party
Brian Cloughley
Charlie Wilson and Pakistan: the Strange Congressman Behind the
CIA's Most Expensive War
Linville and Ruder
Tyson
Strike Draws the Line
Jim Lobe
Bush Administration Divided Over Iran
Ramzy Baroud
Sharon Freezes the Road Map
Tom Turnipseed
Blowback in Iraq
Gary Leupp
Condi's
Speech: From Birgmingham to Baghdad, Imperialism's Freedom Ride
Website of the Day
Tony Benn's Greatest Hits
Recent
Stories
August 13, 2003
Joanne Mariner
A Wall of Separation Through the
Heart
Donald Worster
The Heavy Cost of Empire
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Elaine Cassel
Murderous Errors: Executing the Innocent
Ralph Nader
Make the Recall Count
Alexander Cockburn
Ted Honderich Hit with "Anti-Semitism" Slur
Website of the Day
Defending Yourself Against DirectTV Lawsuits: 9000 and Counting
August 12, 2003
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Ron Jacobs
Revisionist History: the Bush Administration, Civil Rights and
Iraq
Josh Frank
Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up
Wayne Madsen
What's a Fifth Columnist? Well, Someone Like Hitchens
Ray McGovern
Relax,
It Was All a Pack of Lies
Wendy Brinker
Hubris in the White House
Website of the Day
Black
Mustache
August
11, 2003
Douglas
Valentine
Homeland Security for Whom?
Mickey
Z.
Bush's Progress
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Meet the New Bitch, Same
as the Old
Elaine
Cassel
Indicting DNA
Dr. Mohammad
Omar Farooq
Civil Liberties and Uncivil Super-Patriotism
Uri
Avnery
Who Will Save Abu Mazen?
Website
of the Day
RIAA Subpoena Clearinghouse
August
9 / 10, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
California's Glorious Recall!
Saul
Landau
Bush and King Henry
Gary
Leupp
On Terrorism, Methodism, "Wahhabism"
and the Censored 9/11 Report
Paul de
Rooij
The Parade of the Body Bags
Michael
Egan
History and the Tragedy of American Diplomacy
Rob Eshelman
A Home of Our Own
Daoud
Kuttab
Life as an ID Card
Philip
Agee
Terror and Civil Society: Instruments of US Policy in Cuba
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Marc Racicot: Bush's Main Man
Walt Brasch
Schwarzenegger, "Hollyweird"
and the Rigtheous Right
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush, Bribery and Berlusconi
Josh Frank
Mean, Mean Howard Dean
Elaine
Cassel
Will the Death Penalty Ever Die?
Sean Carter
Total Recall
Poets'
Basement
Hamod, Engel, Albert
August
8, 2003
John
Chuckman
What the US Says Goes
Roberto
Barreto
Defend the Vieques 12!
Bruce Gagnon
Iraq War Emboldens Bush Space Plans
Elaine
Cassel
The Reign of John Ashcroft
Dave
Lindorff
Snoops Night Out
Website
of the Day
Zero Boy
August
7, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
It the US a "Terrorist Magnet?"
Toni
Solo
Neo-liberal Nicaragua: a New Banana
Republic
Adam Lebowitz
Hiroshima Commemorated: the View from Japan
Hanan
Ashrawi
When the Bully Whines
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Conscience Takes a Holiday
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Lets Slip: Iraq Not Behind 9/11; No Ties to Al-Qaeda
Mike Kimaid
What's the Score?
Elaine
Cassel
The Smell of VICTORY: Ashcroft's Latest Stinkbomb
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
August 6, 2003
Steve
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause: It's Not
Easy Confronting King Coal
David
Krieger
Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Robert
Fisk
The Ghosts of Uday and Qusay
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's War on the National Forests
Elaine
Cassel
No Fly Lists
Stan
Goff
Military Equipment and Pneumonia
Hugh Sansom
An Open Letter to Nicholas Kristof on the Nuking of Japan
August
5, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Prisoner of Ramallah: Arafat at
74
Forrest
Hylton
Terrorism and Political Trials: the
View from Bolivia
Ray
McGovern
"We Cook Estimates to Go"
David
Morse
Poindexter's Gambit
Edward
Said
Orientallism: 25 Years Later
George
W. Bush
My Darn Good Resumé
Hammond
Guthrie
It's Incremental, Watson!
Website
of the Day
National Prayer Day
August 4, 2003
Bruce
K. Gagnon
Another Peace Activist Detained by
Airport Cops: My Story
David
Lindorff
Fear-Mongering About Social Security
Mark
Zepezauer
George F. Will: Descent into Self-Parody
James
Plummer
Tracking You Through the Mail
Mickey
Z.
Marriage Insecurity from Sharon to Bush
Bruce
Jackson
News that Isn't News: How the NYT's
Pimps for the White House
August
2 / 3, 2003
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
August
1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Stopping Prison Rape
Alex Coolman
Who Moved My Soap: Trivializing
Prison Rape
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Stan Goff
Injury and Decorum: The Missing Wounded in Iraq
Wayne
Madsen
Europe Unplugs from the Matrix
Robert
Fisk
Wolfowitz the Censor
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Loses Big in Puerto Rico
Website
of the Day
Stop Prisoner Rape
July
31, 2003
Ray
McGovern
The Prostitution of Intelligence
Brian
Cloughley
Wolfowitz's Operative Statement
Sheldon
Hull
The RIAA's Jihad:
The Devil's Music (Industry)
Elaine
Cassel
The Next Time You Crack a Lawyer Joke, Think of These Attorneys
Sheldon
Rampton
and John Stauber
True Lies: Propaganda and Bush's
Wars
Hammond
Guthrie
Speculation Blues
Website
of the Day
Army of One?
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
July
30, 2003
David
Lindorff
Poindexter the Terror Bookie
Marjorie
Cohn
Why Iraq and Afghanistan? It's About
the Oil
Elaine
Cassel
How Ashcroft Coerces Guilty Pleas
in Terror Cases
Zvi
Bar'el
The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War
Lisa Walsh
Thomas
Killing Mustafa Hussein: Death of a Child, Birth of a Legend?
Sean
Carter
Pat Robertson's Prayer Jihad: God, Sodomy and the Supremes
ND Jayaprakash
India and Ariel Sharon
Steve
Perry
Bush's Top 40 Lies
Standard
Schaefer
Correction about Bloomberg and Outscourcing
Website
of the Day
Bring Them Home Now!
Hot Stories
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
August
16, 2003
"They grabbed
my neck and hurled me out of the courtroom, put me in this black
SUV and then drove me to a federal building..."
an
Interview with Sherman Austin
By MERLIN CHOWKWANYUN
On August 4th, U.S. District Court Judge Steven
V. Wilson, a Reagan appointee, sentenced 20-year-old Southern
California anarchist Sherman Austin to a year in federal prison,
three years of probation and a $2,000 fine. Austin is the webmaster
of the anarchist website www.raisethefist.com.
Nearly two years ago on January 24, 2002, federal law enforcement
agents raided Austin's Sherman Oaks, CA home and seized all his
computers and other possessions. In late 2002, after months of
legal limbo and harassment in between, federal prosecutors formally
accused Austin of distributing information on explosives with
the knowledge that some readers would use such info to commit
a federal violent crime. That became a federal 'crime' in 1997,
when Sen. Dianne Feinstein attached a blatantly unconstitutional
amendment to a defense spending bill. The offending web material
on his raisethefist.com was part of an Internet tract called
the "Reclaim Guide" that Austin didn't even author
-- but for which he had offered free hosting on his site.
Although Austin initially planned to
fight the charge and go to trial, he later learned this could
have entailed risking up to 20 years in prison under penalty
clauses in the 1997 federal law. Additionally, there existed
terrorism sentencing enhancements first enacted in 1995 that
saw their reach broaden under subsequent legislation, including
the notorious 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty
Act, a Patriot Act antecedent signed with much fanfare by Bill
Clinton. Austin thus accepted a plea bargain under which he was
sentence.
His case has major implications for civil
liberties and cyberlaw. It also is a case study in post-9/11
judicial railroading, the dereliction of duty by the establishment
left (Mother Jones et. al) to cover it adequately, and the escalating
clamp-down on dissent towards which many socially and politically
disconnected Americans seem (sometimes cheerfully) oblivious.
And the case demonstrates that Ashcroft Justice existed long
before spineless Democrats abdicated the executive office.
Much discussion about Austin has come
from inaccurate secondhand information. The interview below,
derived from a series of lengthy conversations the author had
with Austin, allows Austin to narrate, in his own words, all
the (sometimes farcical) twists leading up to his sentencing.
THE RAID, LEGAL BACKGROUND
MERLIN CHOWKWANYUN: Let's start from
Point A. What happened? How did this all begin? You were living
in Sherman Oaks, CA on January 24, 2002.
SHERMAN AUSTIN: It
was around 4 p.m. in the afternoon. I was just taking a nap.
Luckily, my sister was home. She went out with her friend, and
when she was leaving, when she was walking to her car, she noticed
a lot of FBI-looking cars and agents with those earpieces, parked
all up and down the street. She knew something wasn't right.
She ran back into the house and told me what was up, so I got
up and went to the front door. Two special agents at the front
door pulled me outside. By that time, they had already had the
house surrounded with loaded weapons, machine guns, shotguns...about
25 federal agents.
MC: What was your first reaction?
Did you know what they were coming for?
SA: Yeah, I wasn't really surprised.
Right when my sister told me, when I woke up, I pretty much knew
why they were there. They had been monitoring the site for a
very long time, and at times, I received over 100 hits from the
Department of Defense on the website, so I wasn't the slightest
bit surprised.
MC: What did the agents proceed to
do?
SA: They showed me a search warrant,
and I just glanced at it. I was half-awake. I was just kind of
taking it easy, not really putting up a fuss.
They just went into the house. They searched
all the rooms in the house. They knew where my room was. They
went back there, looked at all the computers, asked me to come
in and tell them what all the computers were for specifically
so they knew how to dismantle the network I had been running.
They searched the garage, pretty much everywhere with their guns
still out and drawn. They still had people surrounding the house
with their weapons drawn.
MC: In addition to seizing the computer
equipment, they also seized political literature. Is that correct?
SA: Yeah, I had a big stack of political
literature, everything from just newspapers to basic literature,
books, bios. They just took that entire stack and put it in a
big box as well as a bunch of protest signs I had.
MC: The warrant refers to documents
and materials with keywords like, "International Monetary
Fund," "IMF," "WEF," anything anyone
involved with the anti-globalization movement would read. After
they seized this, then what happened?
SA: They came into my room, took out
all the computers, and mirrored each hard drive. When they were
done downloading all the information off each hard drive, they
took all the computers, all the literature, and loaded everything
into a big white truck and left.
My room was ransacked. After that, I
just took pictures of my room, the way they left it, and wrote
an article about what happened and posted it around. I was still
planning to go to the World Economic Forum (WEF) protest in New
York [in early February 2002], even despite what happened. I
drove to New York in my car. When I got there, I didn't get a
chance to march really. I was just standing in Columbus Circle,
and then about 15-20 police officers just rushed us. They completely
broke through this line of media people. They arrested about
26 of us. I was in jail for about 30 hours. I think mostly everyone
else was in there for about 20 to 25 hours.
While I was in jail, they handcuffed
me and took me to a backroom, where a detective from the FBI
and a Secret Service agent were, and they interrogated me for
about three or four hours. During this whole time, I kept noticing
more and more FBI agents walking in and out of the room. They
asked me stupid questions like if I was a terrorist or involved
in any terrorist organizations. I told them, "No,"
and it's funny, he [an agent] looked at me like I was seriously
a terrorist and that I was lying to him.
You know how they use those interrogation
tactics on you? It's just unbelievable. There's no way to describe
it.
MC: They knew you were coming to New
York?
SA: What I had later learned was that
the FBI knew I was going to New York a couple days after the
raid. The Secret Service notified the Chief of Police to pick
me up and arrest me. I guess they just wanted to scoop a bunch
of people up, hoping they got me, and unfortunately they did.
MC: After your arrest and the 30 hours,
what happened?
SA: I was released and waiting in the
court for someone to pick me up for about 30 minutes. About five,
six FBI agents walked into the courthouse and arrested me. They
said I was being arrested for distribution of information related
to explosives over the Internet. I asked, "Why didn't you
arrest me in California?" When I was raided in California,
they said, "You're in trouble, but you're free to go right
now. You're not going to be arrested. You can leave right now."
They grabbed my neck and hurled me out
of the courtroom, put me in this black SUV and then drove me
to a federal building, where they processed me. They put me in
a maximum-security federal jail facility in downtown Manhattan,
where I was at for about 11 days until I was taken to Oklahoma.
MC: How long were you in Oklahoma?
SA: I was in Oklahoma federal jail for
about two days, so it was a total of 13 days in custody. We were
going to try and see if I could get bail, but at the bail hearing,
the judge denied me bail because the FBI had said I was a "man
on the mission" and that I was coming to "carry out"
plans of action. When they searched my car, they said that they
found a gasoline canister and I think duct tape. Who wouldn't
have a gasoline canister on them when driving 3,000 miles across
country?
MC: What exactly was on the website
that they found so alarming or that they claimed to find so alarming?
SA: There was a link posted on my site
to another site, which wasn't affiliated with raisethefist.com,
but which was hosted on the same server because I gave hosting
space to different people who wanted some free hosting. I just
provided the link to that site. It was called the Reclaim Guide.
It was just a general protest guide that went over security culture
and stuff like that. A small portion of that guide dealt with
explosives information. This information was just pathetic compared
to the type of stuff you could find in any library or any other
website. There's so much detailed information out there on explosives
and how to use and build explosives that you can find on the
Internet. If someone wanted to use explosives for illegal purposes,
I don't think they would rely on raisethefist.com to get their
information because there's so much information out there readily
available.
There's something on the Internet called
the White Resistance Manual. It's pretty much for white supremacists.
It's a manual to carry out a large-scale guerilla campaign through
means of assassination, threats, obtaining funds through fraud,
everything from firearms to explosives. I've seen, not surprisingly,
no action taken against those people, but here I am, an anarchist
website, not even close to what that is, not even close to what
else you can find on the Internet.
While they were at my house, interrogating
me, they asked me about seven times if I authored the Reclaim
Guide. I told them seven times I didn't author it. In the arrest
warrant that they had written after the raid when they arrested
me in New York, it says that I told them I authored the Reclaim
Guide. It's funny how they try to slip it by and build a whole
fraudulent case against you with things that you didn't do.
MC: Now what was the exact charge?
Its not just that information about explosives was on the server,
but there was also this clause on intent...
SA: From what I've heard, it's not illegal
to distribute information on explosives. What's illegal is the
intent part. It's such a weird charge because it's almost like
thought crime. How do you prove that someone has intent? I can
go on to tons of other websites that have explosives information
on them, especially white supremacy web sites. We obviously know
they have intent because they've used that type of information
before against people. They're not being prosecuted for it.
To me, it makes it better for them because
that way they can use that as a form of selective enforcement
on whom they want to bring charges against with that type of
charge and whom they just want to let by and let off the hook.
It's almost like how they prove intent is if maybe you're an
anarchist or a socialist or a communist or just anyone who doesn't
agree with the way things are currently going in this political
climate right now. It's interesting because...I'd said this before...how
do they prove intent? Bush made that pretty obvious when he said,
"You're either with us or against us." If you disagree,
you have intent, right then and there.
MC: I've read one affidavit in which
the FBI still claims that you wrote the Reclaim Guide, even though
it's fairly obvious that you didn't. If you go to archive.org,
you can actually see the old site, and it's very obvious that
the site's structure links, as you said, to a bunch of different
sites. From what I understand, the FBI knew that you didn't author
it, and they still persisted in claiming that you did. Is that
correct?
SA: Yeah. We went through a number of
different plea agreements because things were always getting
changed, and every time they presented us with a new and different
plea agreement, the prosecutors or the FBI always put back in
that I authored the explosives information. The FBI even interviewed
the person who authored the explosives information on that site
that I was hosting. They knew, even before the raid, that I did
not author that information, but they still tried to say I did
in the search warrant and everything.
MC: So after the WEF protest, the
arrest in New York and the two days spent in Oklahoma in Feb.
2002, what happened?
SA: After that, I was pretty much released
because the prosecutors decided they didn't want to file an indictment.
I'm assuming they wanted to go through all my computers first.
My lawyer had a court order put in to send me back on a plane
to Los Angeles by myself, so I was flown back to Los Angeles.
I didn't have anything. All my clothes I took with me, my car,
my wallet, my money, everything I had with me was still in New
York. All I had with me was my belt. I received my wallet about
two weeks later from my lawyer in New York.
MC: How much time elapsed before you
heard again from a prosecutor or authority figure?
SA: It was about six months until we
heard again from the prosecutor, but in between that time, there
was a lot of harassment from authority figures and local police...being
followed by detectives, being followed by FBI agents at protests.
It was funny because the first protest I went to after I got
out was in Irvine. It was against Taco Bell because of the way
they exploit their farm workers, tomato pickers in Florida. When
I went there, they had an FBI agent there, and they had another
FBI agent there in the crowd, and he was just standing two feet
in front of me, taking pictures of me. He must have taken at
least 10 or 20 pictures of me. I had to be escorted out of the
protest by people with the National Lawyers Guild because they
were surveilling me the whole time. It was unbelievable.
Things like that have happened. I've
been riding my bike down the street at night, and a police officer
will stop me, and he'll know my name. Two other cops will come,
and they both will know my name and ask me about my website.
They'll start asking me about my website and ask questions like,
"Why do you hate cops so much?" They will try to debate
me and argue with me on anarchism and everything like that. It's
just ongoing harassment.
MC: Later in 2002, when you heard
from a prosecutor again, what happened?
SA: My lawyer told me that the prosecutor
called him and said that they didn't really find anything on
my computers to get me for -- but they didn't want to let me
off the hook. At first I wanted to fight the charges, but then
I decided to take a pre-indictment binding plea, which was going
to be one month in jail and five months in a community corrections
facility. We got that set up, and then I went to court to enter
the plea before the judge, and the judge rejected it because
he wanted me to serve more time.
After that, we went back to the drawing
board and worked up another plea, which was just a sentencing
range between 6 and 12 months. It wasn't as specific as the first
plea, where it said one month in jail, five months in community
corrections.
We went back with that, but by the time we went back to court
for that, my criminal history went back up another point because
of another conviction I had because I was pulled over by the
Long Beach police for a broken headlight. At that time, I didn't
know my license was suspended because I had never received anything
in the mail, so when they pulled me over, they asked me if I
knew my license was suspended, and I said, "No." They
took my car, and I was convicted because when you're driving
with a suspended license, it's a criminal conviction. That went
on my record, and since it was two convictions, my criminal history
category went up. My sentencing range changed from between 6
and 12 months to 8 and 14 months.
MC: And now, you initially weren't
going to do a plea bargain. You were actually going to go to
trial on principle.
SA: Yeah, at first I just wanted to go
to trial because all I was going to risk was three to four years
in prison. We learned that was different after we consulted a
probation officer on the case, and we learned that a terrorism
enhancement was applicable to what I was being charged with.
What that is that it's the judge's decision where he can add
on up to 20 years onto your sentence, so if I had gone to trial,
I'd have risked anywhere from 20 to 24 years in federal prison.
MC: The judge, Stephen V. Wilson,
was unhappy with the eventual plea agreement and expressed this
during a hearing on June 30, 2003. That's when you were initially
scheduled to receive your final sentence. What did he say then?
SA: We went in there, and my lawyer was
telling the judge how I just got caught up and I didn't really
think about what was posted on the website. My lawyer asked if
he accepted the plea.
The judge turned pretty defiant. It seemed
like he already had different plans made up. He said that this
should be looked at with more of a deterrent outcome to future
"revolutionaries" wanting to act in a similar manner.
He just openly admitted that he wanted to make an example out
of me.
He said also to the prosecutors something
like, "Out of all the nonsense cases you bring me, you finally
bring me something serious but don't take it seriously."
The atmosphere of the courtroom was nothing
but political at that time. It was completely obvious that this
was nothing but a political case. He made it clear that he wanted
to give me a lot of jail time. He said that he wanted to give
me at least between 8 and 10 months in jail, but before making
his final decision, he asked the prosecutors what the Justice
Department thought about the case. It's pretty irrelevant to
the case because it's the prosecutors who are representing the
government, not necessarily the Justice Department. That's what
the prosecution told the judge.
The judge told the prosecution to get
head FBI Director [Robert] Mueller's opinion on the case. The
judge wanted him to consult on the case and get his opinion and
recommendation on sentencing.
MC: The judge used the word "revolutionaries."
He seemed to hint that you might also be a violent person, a
harm to others. Can you talk about the psychological study you
underwent to try and refute that?
SA: My lawyer said it was a good idea
that I go see a psychologist and go under a psychological analysis
to prove that I was a non-violent person by nature. I went into
that, and the psychologist wrote up an entire report on me, stating
that I was a non-violent person and that jail wouldn't be the
right sentence for me to serve. I think she recommended something
different like community service or something like that. I think
that pissed off the judge even more. He said that this had nothing
to do with psychology. He was pretty turned off by it. He acted
like it was completely irrelevant to the case.
THE SENTENCE
MC: So now on June 30, 2003, he delayed
the sentencing to July 28, 2003. What happened then?
SA: Well, we went back to court on July 28, and when we got there,
we learned that the clerk never entered it into the judge's schedule,
so it was actually never scheduled that day. So then, after that,
we got it rescheduled for next Monday, a week later. We went
back on next Monday, which was on August 4th, for sentencing.
We went back, and the judge asked the prosecutor what the FBI
thought and what the Justice Department thought. And the FBI
and Justice Department were both on board with the plea. They
both agreed with it...the sentencing guidelines of four months
in jail and four months in community confinement. And the judge
just asked my lawyer a few questions. My lawyer advised me that
I should just tell the judge a lot had changed since the incident...I
was 18 then, and I'm 20 now...and it was just try and tell the
judge that I was a good person, just try and set a positive image.
But all of that was pretty much completely irrelevant to the
judge. It looked like he already had his mind set and his mind
made up. He just announced that he wanted to give me 12 months
in prison.
MC: It seems like he had hoped that
the FBI would also propose a very harsh sentence, and then when
it didn't do that, he just basically ignored what it suggested.
What was the reaction of people in the courtroom?
SA: Everyone seemed pretty shocked. The
FBI, I don't think they were shocked. They pretty much came out
with smiles on their faces. I think the prosecutors were a little
bit shocked. Everyone else who was there was shocked. It was
pretty saddening. It was pretty horrible that this judge was
just going to give me 12 months in prison for no other reason
really than to set an example, for no other reason than my political
views.
MC: Did he give a clear reason why
he chose to go with 12 months even though the FBI had suggested
four months?
SA: His only reason was that he wanted
to set an example for, in his words, future "revolutionaries."
MC: In addition to the one-year sentence
in federal prison, there are also three years of probation. When
I read these probation provisions, I was quite shocked. These
are very strict and draconian provisions. Can you tell us what
they are?
SA: One of them is that I can't associate
with any group or persons who advocate violence or political
or social or economic change. Basically, I can't associate myself
with anarchists. It actually says that on the pre-sentencing
report, that I can't associate myself with anarchists or anarchist
associations.
If I have to use a computer for work,
I have to consult with the probation officer, but I can't use
a computer for any type of political organizing or any type of
political use. It's just obvious that they're just trying to
keep me away from a computer.
As long as I'm using it for work to make
money for income, for a job, it's fine, but even with that, I'm
going to have very intense restrictions. I'm going to have my
computer probably seized at least once a week or once every two
weeks. I'm going to have to have tracking software installed
on my computers. I'm going to have to surrender DSL phone bills
and everything like that so they can monitor every little thing
I'm doing.
MC: So there was this Reclaim Guide
on there. You didn't author it. You were merely loaning out some
server space. Right after you were sentenced, there was a lot
of erroneous media coverage. In particular, there was an AP article
that a lot of sources across the country seemed to pick up.
SA: After my sentencing, the AP article
was written to make it sound like I was the one who actually
authored the explosives information, and not just that, but that
my entire website was also explosives information. They didn't
point out that raisethefist.com was just an open publishing website,
and just a small portion of that website contained a link to
another website that had explosives information on it. They made
it sound like I authored the information and the entire website
was about explosives, and they also made it sound like I apologized
for making the entire website, like I was just some stupid little
kid who didn't know any better and was just completely intimidated
by what the FBI had done.
MC: When will you have to report for
prison, and do you know where you are going?
SA: The date when I'm going to have to
surrender myself is September 3, which will be next month. I'm
not sure exactly where I'm going to be at, but I have an idea.
They might send me to Lompoc. They might send me to Boron or
Nellis. They might send me to Terminal Island. It's all up to
the Bureau of Prisons.
RACIAL DIMENSIONS
MC: You are an African-American male.
What did you learn about the racial dimensions of this case and
this legal system?
SA: There are definitely racial implications
in this case. We're dealing with a system that has more people
locked up in the prison industrial-complex than any other country
in the world. The longest I've been to jail is 13 days, but every
time I've gone, it's obvious there are racial implications. We're
dealing with a very racist institution. I felt if I had been
white and had a lot of money, I could have bought my way out
of this. It's just disgusting what the system is doing, not just
to people who are politically involved but people who just happen
to be black.
There've been times where I've been waiting
in jail and seen young black males come back in tears because
they've had to take a plea and gotten 14 years because they've
basically been convinced that they couldn't fight the system.
Number one, they're a person of color. They come from a low-income
background. They don't have the money to afford a private attorney
like a lot of other people do who happen to be white.
We can look at the people at Enron, who are just barely getting
a slap on the wrist, if anything. It's such blatant racism if
you look at it.
MC: The most outrageous irony to this
case is that while you will be going to prison for one year for
raisethefist.com, Kenneth Lay, the ex-head of Enron, has not
been indicted on anything. In your case, in terms of racial dimensions,
the person who actually did author the Reclaim Guide, he was
white and from a fairly affluent background.
SA: Yeah, and I think he realizes that
too. It's just so obvious. Why didn't they go after him? If you
look at the charge, they could have just as much indicted him
as they wanted to indict me, but they decided to go after me
instead of him.
REFLECTIONS
MC: What do you say to people who
have fears and are worried about getting involved politically?
SA: First of all, don't let them intimidate
you. Don't let them keep you into a state of fear where you become
pacified and too afraid to stand up and voice your opinion because
that's what they want to do. If they keep us pacified in a state
of fear, they have us under control. We have a very serious problem
if they're able to do that. If we don't speak up, who's going
to speak up? It's only up to us to do what has to be done to
stop this problem, to stop this system and this government from
doing what they're doing. The best advice I can give to people
is don't be intimidated. Don't let them scare you into not getting
politically active. There're more of us than there are of them.
They can't come after every single one of us. If we all stand
up, and we all take the initiative to take an active role in
challenging the system, they won't be able to do anything about
it. They don't have the capacity to lock us all up. They're definitely
going to try and lock a bunch of us away and silence a bunch
of us, but they don't have the capacity to silence us 100%.
MC: Will raisethefist.com continue
to run?
SA: Yeah, I'm working on currently setting
up a team to keep the site going and to make sure, if something
happens with our current host, that we can get the site moved
to another backup server immediately so we can eliminate any
long-term downtime.
MC: I must say that, in my opinion,
liberal, bourgeois organizations like the ACLU and institutional
publications like The Nation and Mother Jones really dropped
the ball on this case. I think the only publications that really
deserve a pat on the back are the Village Voice, the LA Weekly,
the Washington Post of all papers, and a very little-known newsletter
called the Progressive Populist, and of course, IndyMedia. What's
your take?
SA: It's kind of weird and messed up.
It's confusing. Why wouldn't the ACLU want to take something
on like this? They were contacted almost immediately after I
was arrested in New York by the FBI. They said they didn't do
criminal cases and couldn't do anything. It's obviously a case
that deals with civil liberties and freedom of speech. When the
government will come after us, they'll tack these charges on
us as criminal cases. It looks like there are going to be more
and more criminal cases that involve civil liberties than there
are going to be civil suits. I think the ACLU, if they want to
really start defending people on their civil liberties, should
really think about reorganizing the way they represent people
in court.
OTHER ALLEGATIONS
IN FBI DOCUMENTS
MC: I have to ask you to address one
issue -- and it's in many ways not a relevant question because
it wasn't even part of that one final charge -- but I'm asking
it because many observers hostile to your political orientation
may pounce on it, and you should have a chance to respond. In
the warrant and in this FBI memorandum I'm reading now, there
are sections on alleged "defacements" of private web
sites and such.
SA: They never proved anything. They
sure had a bunch of stuff about it in the warrant, arrest affidavit,
and discovery materials. We were thinking, since they included
it so much, why didn't the prosecutors just charge me with that
-- instead of the distribution of information charge since that
was a charge the judge was going to reject their suggested sentencing
range for. But they didn't want to do it, I'm assuming, because
they didn't have enough to prove it.
MC: Right. I mean, I've always found
it peculiar that if those other supposed accusations were correct,
why they didn't just go for that instead of this distribution
charge with intent, which is significantly harder to show.
SA: The same with the "firearm,"
Molotov cocktail charge.
MC: What about the actual crime some
FBI documents were claiming -- the defacements and admitting
to it? Is the FBI memorandum inaccurate when they say that you
admitted to the this stuff? Did they take something you said
out of context?
SA: I don't remember their asking me
to admit it. I remember their saying, "Did you hack into
any web site?" and "Did you hack into any government
computer systems?" I was about to tell them, "No,"
then they kept cutting me off saying, "If you did or don't
know, then don't tell us."
I don't remember admitting anything to
them except that I ran raisethefist.com, and I was an anarchist,
and again, I must have told them seven times straight out that
I didn't author the reclaim guide when they were right there
at my house, but they put in that I told them I authored it.
MC: On some sites, there are citations
to an interview you did with some reporter, in which you supposedly
admitted to the defacing. Now, reporters screw up all the time
or misquote. Is that what happened there?
SA: It was probably a misquote, or I
was answering a different question of his. I remember that interview
actually. It was over AIM while I was on the east coast before
the WEF.
I had tons of FTP servers and passwords stored on my computers
for web sites, which were my clients'. They voluntarily gave
them to me because I uploaded and installed my software on their
servers. They also said I did credit card fraud too. It was the
same thing with credit cards, which were also in my client database,
from clients who purchased my software and at times would pay
for things on a monthly basis
They said my whole client database, which
had my clients' credit cards and billing info in it, was a database
of stolen credit cards I was using for credit card fraud A lot
of people who also ordered my software were using stolen credit
cards. I'd find out every time I got a charge back. These charges
were always reported as fraudulent charges as well, so in my
client database I had people's orders with their billing info
and credit card numbers for orders that were made by other people
doing credit card fraud.
I was also running Linux 6.0, which had
various exploits in it. One I remember specifically was an exploit
in the DNS, which gave anyone complete access to my server. Several
times people used my server to try and break into the FDIC and
other government computer systems.
MC: I never asked you about the way
the FBI interrogation took place. Would you describe it as coercive?
Were they constantly interrupting you, bullying you into answers,
trying to pigeonhole you into saying certain things?
SA: They were playing the good cop, bad
cop game. [FBI Agent] John Pi tried to play nice like he was
my friend. They would ask questions, and if I didn't answer,
go back to them later and ask them again. The Secret Service,
too, held up a picture of Bush with crosshairs over him that
he found on my site and asked if I wanted to kill the president.
I said, "No," then he asked, "Well would you like
to see the president killed?"
MC: Do you wish you went to trial
also so you could refute those defacement claims? I know that
wasn't in the eventual charge, but I'm sure they would have tried
to introduce it somehow, perhaps to tar your character.
SA: If I knew I was going to get a year
under the plea, yeah, I would have taken it to trial.
LAW ENFORCEMENT SURVEILLANCE AND ONGOING HARASSMENT
MC: Can you talk about the Long Beach
Police Department, what sort of things they've been doing, and
how long it's been going on?
SA: I moved to Long Beach in 2002 around
March, when I had first got out of federal jail in New York and
when I got raisethefist.com back up and everything. I thought
the LAPD was bad. When I got to Long Beach, I'd never seen a
police force more crazy than the LAPD.
When I moved, I experienced everything
from getting followed to having undercover detectives parked
in front of where I was living, just watching people come in
and out. I saw a lot of weird stuff happen where undercover police
have looked into my car, walked around it, and then walked off
after I saw them and pretended that they were ordinary people
listening to walkmen. They'd have little headphones, earpieces
in their ears, but of course they weren't hooked up to any walkmen.
They were hooked up to a walkie-talkie or something.
I've seen so much, not just happen to
me, but other people around me. I can go back to May 1, 2001.
That was actually my first time coming to Long Beach. We tried
to have a peaceful march on the streets as a celebration of workers'
rights day. It was May Day, and just two minutes into the march,
police were already swinging their batons at us.
Eventually, they just lured us into this
trap and opened fire on us with all this riot gear and all these
rubber bullets. That was an outrageous brutal attack. That was
a bloody brutal attack. They broke people's arms. I myself was
shot twice. I had embedded penetrating wounds in my calf, which
I still have scars of today, and I still have one of the fragments
embedded in my leg today, two and a half years later.
Even after that, the repression from
Long Beach Police Department continued to intensify. They didn't
just come after me, but other people like Matthew Lamont [a Long
Beach-area anarchist], who's in jail right now. He just pleaded
no contest and got two years, and he has an appeal in October.
We used to have an infoshop in Long Beach.
It was an anarchist community empowerment center. On Hitler's
birthday, Matthew Lamont was followed from the infoshop by two
Long Beach detectives into Whittier, and he was pulled over,
and they arrested him on explosives charges. They were saying
that he was going to blow up a Nazi party that was supposed to
happen that day. There was no Nazi party scheduled for that day.
He was arrested and taken to Orange County jail facility and
put in solitary confinement.
He had court hearings at least a few
times a month, and we would always go to his court hearings.
Every time I'd go to his court hearings, I'd just come within
a few blocks of the courthouse, and all of a sudden I would have
at least five cop cars following me until I parked and got out
of my car, and then they would get out of the car and ask why
I was there...just basically harass me and intimidate me. I'd
walk into the courthouse, and sheriffs inside of the courthouse
would come up to me and ask if there was anything planned for
that day. They would treat me like I was some leader or something.
I'm just some ordinary guy with a website just coming to view
a public court hearing, which is supposed to be a constitutional
right, but the way they intimidate you, the way they harass you,
it seems like they don't even want you to come.
There's Javier Perez, who was deported
after May Day. He's actually in Mexico right now and doesn't
have enough money to make it back to the U.S. There's Robert
Middaugh, who was actually supposed to get out of jail after
serving two years, and then they arrested him again and put him
back in. I think he's out on bail now, but they're trying to
get him back in for even more time, even more years.
MC: What kind of things are they trying
to charge them for?
SA: Javier Perez, he was in jail, and
they got him to sign a voluntary deportation form in which they
would let him out if they deported him to Mexico. I think when
he first came to the United States, he was two-years-old. He
doesn't even speak Spanish. He didn't even grow up in Mexico.
What was he supposed to do there? It's been really hard for him
to make it through all this.
Robert Middaugh, I can't remember the
exact charge, but I know that what they're trying to charge him
with now is assault on a federal police officer from an incident
that happened in Wilshire, in downtown at the federal building,
when an anti-immigrant group was there having a demonstration
on the fourth of July a few years ago. I think he was arrested,
and one of the police officers said that he threw a soda at him
with his right hand but in fact he's left-handed.
They're trying to give him some more
time for that. It's just absolutely ridiculous what they're doing,
which is just coming down on anyone and everyone they can.
They're not just coming down after those
people, but the Long Beach police have routinely just stopped
people on the street just because they're wearing black or they
look like an anarchist. They've stopped and harassed them, followed
them to the apartment, searched them. In one case, one guy came
into our center who was crying because he said the police threw
him to the ground and put guns to his head and asked him if he
was affiliated with the infoshop we were running, and he said,
"No." He had no idea who we were until that happened.
It was interesting because a lot of people started coming in
and telling us that police had been following them and harassing
them and trying to search them because they were suspected of
being anarchists. A wave of people were coming in and telling
us what was going on.
MC: Has any effort been made to file
complaints or lawsuits against these cops?
SA: Yeah, there've been a lot of complaints
filed. From what I know right now, there's a lawyer who's setting
up individual lawsuits from what happened on May 1, 2001. I'm
not sure how soon that's all going to go through, but I know
that they tried to do a big civil case, and I think it was denied.
Since that happened, she's trying to get individual lawsuits
going.
MC: When you walk around Long Beach,
they seem to recognize you.
SA: They've told me my picture is hanging
up in the Long Beach police station. Ever since I've moved to
Long Beach, I've been pulled over so many times and harassed
by police.
MC: What techniques did the FBI use
to watch you?
SA: They were packeting my Internet line,
which is basically monitoring all incoming and outgoing information...all
data going in and out of my DSL connection. And through that,
they were able to get passwords and things like my e-mail accounts,
my instant messenger accounts. On numerous occasions, they blocked
me out of my e-mail accounts, changed the passwords, used the
e-mail accounts to change the domain name server [DNS settings]
on my domain and make it non-accessible on the Internet...and
then playing around with me, sending me an instant message, using
my own screenname online, and telling me the password of the
e-mail account and warning me not to change it, saying that they
were watching me.
They've gone into my instant messenger
accounts, completely taken control over them. They would start
instant messaging people, "You're next," and stuff
like that. I remember one time they came into my account, and
I caught them one time, and they threatened me like, "Your
ass is going to jail." They said a bunch of stuff. It was
pretty obvious they were packeting my line and looking through,
basically downloading all the information they were getting that
was coming in and out of my DSL connection. When they would talk
to people on my screenname, they'd use the exact same wording
that I'd use. They tried to impersonate me word for word, use
the exact same wording I was using. It was pretty obvious they
were monitoring my conversations pretty extensively on a daily
basis, and they were watching everything pretty closely.
MC: I understand you were also able
to look at logs of IP addresses [personally identifiable numbers
assigned to computers on the Internet] and things like that and
that was a second way of confirming they were packeting your
line. Is that correct?
SA: Exactly. When they were getting onto
my screennames, I was able to get their IP addresses, and I remember
tracerouting the IP address to a location in Los Angeles down
to a zip code, and within that same zip code was a federal building.
This happened on a lot of occasions. Once I started getting their
IPs, I noticed they kept changing their IP addresses. I was able
to find out they were the same people going into my e-mail address
and using that to knock my domain offline. I remember when I
was blocked out of my e-mail address, I was assuming someone
was in there checking all the e-mails I was getting. I sent an
e-mail to the e-mail address with a little script that logged
the IP of anyone who opened up any message, and it was the same
IP address of the people that I was logging who were on my screenname,
so that meant it was the same IP address of the person who logged
into my e-mail account and then used my e-mail to knock my domain
offline by changing the DNS servers.
MC: When you were speaking with these
people, did you ever raise this issue with them?
SA: Yeah, I always raised that issue.
Sometimes, they would just play stupid and not say anything.
Other times, they would just openly admit it. They would tell
me the name of my ISP. They would know my name. They would know
names of my friends. They would know where I was living, what
my phone number was. They would know what I was looking at online,
what I was doing, and things like that.
They were saying a lot of racist and
sexist things as well, not just to me but to other people, and
a lot of threats too like, "You're going to jail."
Even death threats sometimes. It was pretty disgusting what they
were doing. The funny thing is...do they not know we know who
they're working for and what they're doing? It seems like everything
they were doing was an intimidation tactic to say, "We're
watching you. You'd better watch out.
MC: What was their rationale for shutting
down the anarchist infoshop?
SA: We had a benefit show for raisethefist
last year in December. About six police officers came with a
noise complaint. We decided to end the show early because we
didn't want to risk any more trouble or anything like that. About
three days later, our leasing company, Crestwave, contacted us
and said that the police called them and said that when they
went to show, the door was slammed in their face and someone
tried to assault them. The police told them that if they didn't
evict us, they were going to take legal action against them.
They put pressure on our leasing company to evict us. On May
3, they evicted us. We had to shut down the place.
MC: People are stunned at how calm
you manage to be through this. The FBI, the prosecutors, were
treating you at some points like the most dangerous man in America.
I know some of your friends and your mother in the courtroom
were shocked. How are you so calm, and what's going through your
mind right now?
SA: I guess I'm so calm because I've
probably gotten used in the past few years to all the harassment
and all the things that have been going on, constantly in this
legal limbo, having to go back and forth to court, having the
thought that I'm potentially going to be facing a long time in
prison just there in my mind for a while now. I've gotten so
used to it that I pretty much expected them to come down on me
the way they did. I wasn't really surprised when the judge gave
me a 12-month prison sentence in federal prison.
If you really look at it, that's the
nature of this government. This government has been persecuting
people for their political beliefs ever since the day it was
founded. Its been persecuting people for the color of their skin
ever since the day it was founded. Look what happened in the
1960s and early 1970s. They completely annihilated political
organizations. They assassinated political organizers, framed
them up, locked them up in jail. Some people just disappeared.
They infiltrated organizations. It's not surprising to see what
they're doing. That's the nature of this government. It's going
to be the nature of this system unless we continue to fight back
and do whatever we have to do that's necessary to put an end
to it.
The most important thing is just to stay
focused and have determination. I don't want them to scare me
into thinking that I can't continue doing what I'm doing. The
more they're going to come down on me, the more I'm going to
organize and continue do things within the community and raisethefist.
Portions of this interview were previously
aired on WBAR 87.9 FM NYC (www.wbar.org).
Minor edits were made for length and clarity.
Merlin Chowkwanyun is an investigative journalist and student at
Columbia University and can be reached at mc2028@columbia.edu
To help Sherman and find out more about
an upcoming emergency benefit show in San Diego on Aug. 29th,
visit la.indymedia.org
and www.raisethefist.com
for updates.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 9 / 10, 2003
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The Parade of the Body Bags
Michael
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History and the Tragedy of American Diplomacy
Rob Eshelman
A Home of Our Own
Daoud
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Life as an ID Card
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Terror and Civil Society: Instruments of US Policy in Cuba
Jeffrey
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Walt Brasch
Schwarzenegger, "Hollyweird"
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Total Recall
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