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FTR #247 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

Lis­ten:
MP3 One Seg­ment [1]

The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of the grow­ing pow­er, influ­ence and respectabil­i­ty of the Moon orga­ni­za­tion. (San Jose Mer­cury News, 8/19/2000, p. E1.)

1. The quot­ed arti­cle describes “church mem­bers elect­ed to state leg­is­la­tures in the Unit­ed States; and a glob­al net­work of busi­ness­es, includ­ing hotels, news­pa­pers, radio and TV sta­tions, car plants, restau­rants and mag­a­zines, such as Golf Digest.” (Idem.)

2. Speak­ing of Bay­ou La Batre (Alaba­ma), the arti­cle con­tin­ues: “uni­fi­ca­tion­ists run sev­er­al of the town’s largest and most suc­cess­ful busi­ness­es; their ship­build­ing com­pa­ny does repair work for the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy.” (Idem.) The Moon orga­ni­za­tion has strong his­tor­i­cal links to Japan­ese fas­cism and the for­mer World Anti-Com­mu­nist League, as well as alleged involve­ment in mind con­trol tech­niques (accord­ing to its crit­ics.) In recent years, for­mer Pres­i­dent George Bush has been doing speech­es for the Moon orga­ni­za­tion.

3. Next, the broad­cast high­lights the role of the FBI in eval­u­at­ing merg­ers between for­eign telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions firms and Amer­i­can com­pa­nies. (The Wall Street Jour­nal, 8/24/2000, pp. A1, A8.)

4. Spe­cial Agent Alan McDon­ald has played a large role in assur­ing that those merg­ers con­form to the Bureau’s elec­tron­ic counter-intel­li­gence require­ments. (Idem.)

5. A recent acqui­si­tion of Amer­i­can Inter­net com­pa­ny Verio by Nip­pon Tele­graph & Tele­phone Com­pa­ny (53% owned by the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment) under­scores the issues involved in such acqui­si­tions. (Idem.) The NTT acqui­si­tion of Verio also spot­lights the Deutsche Telekom pur­chase of Voic­eS­tream.

6. The FBI’s “Car­ni­vore” E‑mail mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem has recent­ly been tar­get­ed by media crit­ics. In this pro­gram, Mr. Emory voic­es his sup­port for the Car­ni­vore sys­tem, and oth­er elec­tron­ic counter-intel­li­gence and sur­veil­lance sys­tems. He points out that any major intel­li­gence and/or fed­er­al police agency must have the capa­bil­i­ty to con­duct wire­taps and oth­er forms of mon­i­tor­ing and eaves­drop­ping. The issue of pre­vent­ing abuse of such capa­bil­i­ties (a dif­fi­cult, but nec­es­sary under­tak­ing) is a sep­a­rate issue. It is unlike­ly that a cor­rupt (or indif­fer­ent) soci­ety will engen­der an intel­li­gence or fed­er­al police agency that con­ducts itself with integri­ty. Con­se­quent­ly, it is impor­tant that cit­i­zens strive to reform the soci­ety as a whole. This view­point should not be mis­un­der­stood as an endorse­ment of vio­la­tions of civ­il lib­er­ties by police or intel­li­gence agen­cies.

7. On the sub­ject of vio­la­tions of civ­il lib­er­ties, the pro­gram high­lights the abuse of the rights of Wen Ho Lee, the Tai­wan-born sci­en­tist accused of spy­ing for the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na. (San Fran­cis­co Exam­in­er, 8/23/2000, p. A23.)

8. An FBI agent tes­ti­fied in court that he had “inad­ver­tent­ly” mis­in­formed the court about Lee’s behav­ior. Among the inad­ver­tent­ly stat­ed items: “Lee had failed a lie detec­tor test, which in fact he passed with very high marks; that Lee failed to dis­close a 1980’s meet­ing with Chi­nese schol­ars, which he’d report­ed to his supe­ri­ors at the time, and that Lee had lied to a Los Alam­os col­league about his pur­pose in down­load­ing files, despite a grand jury record to the con­trary.” (Idem.)

9. Doc­u­ments indi­cat­ing that Lee and his wife worked for the CIA for many years received less pub­lic­i­ty than ini­tial expo­sure of the charges against him. (San Jose Mer­cury News, 8/11/2000, p. 10A.)

10. The dis­clo­sure of this infor­ma­tion influ­enced the judge over­see­ing the case. He ruled that Lee’s coun­sel could uti­lize the doc­u­ments for Lee’s defense. (Idem.)

11. Next, the dis­cus­sion turns to alle­ga­tions that not­ed singer, actor, ath­lete, and polit­i­cal activist Paul Robe­son may have been sub­ject­ed to mind con­trol by ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence. (The Nation, 12/20/1999, p. 9.)

12. Authored by Paul Robe­son Jr. (his son), the arti­cle dis­cuss­es both CIA and FBI inter­est in Robeson’s health; their reluc­tance to release doc­u­ments about Robe­son in response to a FOIA suit; indi­ca­tions that he may have been poi­soned by anti-Sovi­et ele­ments while at a par­ty in Moscow; Robeson’s incar­cer­a­tion in an Eng­lish psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal; his treat­ment with ECT, and his son’s efforts to get him out of the hos­pi­tal. (Idem.)

13. The pro­gram con­cludes with a look at a human­i­tar­i­an award giv­en to Dr. Jack Kevorkian. (Coun­ter­punch, 5/1–15/2000, pp.1, 6.)

14. A lead­ing pro­po­nent of euthana­sia, Kevorkian advo­cates exper­i­ment­ing on liv­ing pris­on­ers, who have been sen­tenced to die. (Idem.)

15. Among the pub­lic nota­bles who vot­ed to give the award to Kevorkian was Glo­ria Steinem, whose CIA back­ground is dis­cussed in M‑4. (Idem.) (Record­ed on 8/27/2000.)