Tuesday, July 22, 2003

THREATS AGAINST THE PRESIDENT are illegal, even though threats against ordinary citizens are not. That is undemocratic and wrong, even when the law is applied only to serious threats.

The Supreme Court did interpret the law reasonably, back in 1969, as a 2001 open letter by various newspaper people relates:

The statute governing threats against the President, 18 U.S.C. § 871(a), provides for criminal sanctions against anyone who threatens the President, but the statute must still be read in the context of free political debate. Our position is supported by the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705 (1969). In Watts, a young man at a political rally was protesting the draft. He had received a draft card and was supposed to report to the Army. He stated, "I am not going. If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J." Id. at 706.
That letter was in response to an incident in 2001 when the Secret Service came down hard on a campus newspaper editorial:
On Wednesday, February 7, 2001, Glenn Given wrote an editorial entitled "Editorial: Dear Jesus Christ, King of Kings, all I ask is that you smite George W. Bush." This editorial was published in The Stony Brook Press, a student newspaper at SUNY-Stony Brook.

The editorial was in the form of an open letter to Jesus. The writer stated that he had recently "found" Jesus in light of the recent election and asked Jesus to "smite" George W. Bush, as well as his Vice President and the cabinet members. The editorial also requested that Jesus smite Carson Daly, host of MTV's Total Request Live.

...

It is our understanding that on February 14, 2001, University police and Secret Service agents arrived unannounced at the newspaper's offices. The agents first demanded to speak to the entire editorial board, but eventually questioned Mr. Given alone when he claimed responsibility for the editorial.

Secret Service agents questioned him extensively and asked him to submit to a psychological evaluation which reportedly consisted of personal questions about his family and his parents' divorce. During questioning, Mr. Given was not represented by an attorney, nor was he advised of his rights as an accused. Mr. Given signed, upon request, a waiver allowing the search of his home. Apparently, nothing threatening was found there. He also signed a medical release authorizing the Secret Service to obtain his medical records. Mr. Given was told by Secret Service agents that his editorial was not protected by the First Amendment and that charges could be filed against him. Agents also stated that they may file charges if they received additional complaints about the editorial. Although Mr. Given voluntarily signed the waivers and offered to remove all remaining newspapers from stands, such actions were taken under the threat of arrest and without legal counsel. The paper has since reported that 2000 copies of the newspaper are missing from a storage area, and there is a concern that Secret Service agents seized those copies.

Nobody goes to jail in stories like these, but they are harassed, and we see federal law enforcement resources wasted. The FBI and Secret Service routinely drop investigations because of lack of men. Every Secret Service agent harassing the press could be investigating a counterfeiter instead.

The latest outrage is something I don't have much information about, but it shows that the motivation is not politics, but stupid bureaucratic mission obsession, since the crime is to publish a pro-Bush cartoon:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Secret Service is studying a pro-Bush cartoon in the Los Angeles Times, showing the president with a gun to his head, as a possible threat, U.S. officials said on Monday.

Cartoonist Michael Ramirez said the drawing, which ran in Sunday's paper, was only meant to call attention to the unjust "political assassination" of Bush over his Iraq policy.

The cartoon, based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph from the Vietnam War, depicts Bush with his hands behind his back as a man labeled "Politics" prepares to shoot him in the head. The background of the drawing is a cityscape labeled "Iraq."

"We're aware of the image and we're in the process of determining what action if any can be taken," John Gill, Secret Service spokesman, said.

An official who asked not to be named said: "The Secret Service does take threats against all of their protectees very seriously and they have an obligation to look into any threat that's made against any of their protectees." The official did not elaborate.

Maybe the FBI isn't so unusual among federal agencies in its incompetence.

UPDATE (July 30). A July 25 interview transcript tells us that the Secret Service was not serious about the Ramirez cartoon:

MICHAEL RAMIREZ: Well you know I got this call from this gentleman, and actually he was very nice, but it was so casual and laid back -- I really assumed it was a crank call! He said-- "I'd like to meet with you somewhere and talk to you. I'm with the Secret Service." And I said "Well, [LAUGHS] y--yeah-- uh, well you can meet me here at the paper. How do I know you're with the Secret Service?" And he said "Well, I've got a black suit and black sunglasses and credentials!" [LAUGHTER] And so I was kind of laughing about it, and I said well sure, come on down and, and make sure you bring your credentials. And-- you know, sure enough, half an hour later, security called my editor and said the Secret Service is here, and at that point, because of precedence and the freedom of the press, legal counsel intervened. So I didn't actually speak to him except for when he initially called me.
There is no problem of intimidation in this particular case. But there remains a problem of wasted federal money--- why did a Secret Service agent have to fly out to Los Angeles for an interview he knew was silly? (or be permanently posted there, if that is the case)

The interview also has another nice story, that shows nice phrasing by one of Nixon's U.S. attorneys:

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. In 1969, Groucho Marx told a magazine reporter that, quote, "The only hope this country has is in Nixon's assassination." Paul Krassner, the publisher of the underground magazine The Realist, heard about his friend's comment impishly dashed off a letter to the Justice Department. The Feds had recently arrested Black Panther leader David Hilliard for threatening Nixon during a speech, and Krassner wanted to know what the government was going to do about Groucho. The U.S. attorney responded that Groucho's remarks did not constitute a true threat because he was an "alleged" comedian, and not "the leader of an organization which advocates killing people and overthrowing the government."
[ http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/03.07.22a.htm ]

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