Press Action ::: Press Action Hero of the Week: CHARLES LEWIS

Friday, February 07, 2003

Press Action Hero of the Week: CHARLES LEWIS

The United States is supposed to represent freedom and democracy. When the Bush regime and its Congressional stooges finish implementing all of the big ticket items on their Big Brother agenda, our government will stand farther away from these principles than it ever has.

The executive and legislative branches of the government are waging a concerted campaign to implement measures that will allow U.S. police and intelligence agencies to continue running amok today and for decades to come. Both branches are working in tandem to strip away our freedoms in the name of security for the American people.

The measures will enhance security, not for individuals, but for government officials and their corporate puppeteers to keep information secure from U.S. citizens, actions that are at odds with the principles of democracy.

Charles Lewis, founder and executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, is working to expose the totalitarian nature of the Bush administration and its accessories in Congress. His latest efforts involve publicizing draft legislation that the Bush Justice Department is preparing that would give the federal police agents greater powers to wiretap, monitor, steal, arrest, kidnap, deport, murder, and so on.

With these latest efforts, Lewis believes the Bush administration may use a war on Iraq as an excuse to ramrod repressive legislation through Congress with the same pathetic level of debate as was exhibited during the passage of the Patriot Act in the fall of 2001.

In a recent interview with PBS television’s Bill Moyers, Lewis said: “It’s incredible. I mean, if Congress doesn’t have oversight over the Justice Department and these programs, who does? That’s how it’s supposed to work in our constitution and in our set up for government.”

Lewis, who has done investigative reporting at ABC News and CBS News and as a producer for Mike Wallace at 60 Minutes, explains that the Bush administration knows that repressive legislation is easier to get passed during so-called periods of war. “They wouldn’t pay as much attention and you know, our worries and our fears are gonna be different than they are now,” Lewis told Moyers. “And there will be less of — all these things will melt away. These are nice concerns about liberties but we’ll be at war. And we’ll have presidents and attorneys general and other government officials telling us things. And I just see a — I see that it wouldn’t work quite as easily for them if it comes out in the next few weeks as opposed to then.”

With the major media serving as official Washington’s propaganda arm, there’s less oversight and information about what government is doing. “That’s the headline and that’s the theme,” Lewis told Moyers.

Lewis notes that the power of government was curbed and rolled back in the 1970s. The push today is to expand the security apparatus and then contrive the “wars” to keep the repressive instruments of power in place indefinitely.

Government repression in the name of security is a dirty enterprise. “People’s lives have been ruined. People have committed suicide because of the pressures brought against them by the government, by these kinds of secret intelligence agencies,” he told Moyers.

-- Mark Hand