I am part of a group of people who, since last November, have engaged in a daily vigil for torture accountability at the Federal Building in Minneapolis. Usually it's a solitary individual, symbolic not only of our small numbers but also of the vulnerability of the detainees held all across the planet.
Wearing an orange jumpsuit and black hood, I hold my sign, which says, "I Am Waiting For Justice." Some passersby half-jokingly shout out, "Aren't we all!" Indeed we are.
WE ARE WAITING for a full accounting of what Major General Antonio Taguba called our "systematic regime of torture." We need to know what was done and what is still being done in our names.
WE ARE WAITING for B. Todd Jones, the United States Attorney for Minnesota, to respond to our request for a meeting, so we can explain why we think he has jurisdiction and a legal and moral obligation to investigate allegations of torture.
WE ARE WAITING for Mr. Jones to remember he took an oath to support and defend the Constitution, not the President and not the Attorney General.
WE ARE WAITING for any United States Attorney to tell President Obama and Attorney General Holder that when judges, inspectors general and Pentagon investigators say we tortured people, we must investigate those claims.
WE ARE WAITING for Minnesota's United States Senators and for Minneapolis' and St. Paul's Congresspersons to open their eyes to torture and to respond to the issues raised in meetings we've had with their staff members since January. Silence is complicity.
WE ARE WAITING for the Obama administration to stop renditioning people to countries our State Department has criticized for abusing prisoners, to refrain from raising obstacles for torture victims who seek redress in our courts, and to begin the healing process by fully examining what we have done.
WE ARE WAITING for anyone in government, for any court, to say, "We are a nation of laws. We have signed treaties; we have passed statutes. Torture must be addressed."
WE ARE WAITING for those who seek to protect our troops, strengthen our alliances, regain our credibility on human rights, and enhance our security to speak out in favor of accountability for torture.
WE ARE WAITING for the American public to rise up and say, "Not in our names. Investigate. Prosecute if necessary. Stop renditions. Allow redress for claims of torture to go forward."
WE ARE WAITING, but our patience is wearing thin. Join us in telling our government the time for waiting is over.
June has been designated Torture Awareness Month by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. Help keep torture from being swept under the rug. Join in the various free public "Torture Awareness Month" events sponsored by a coalition of anti-torture and human rights groups in the Twin Cities, including Amnesty International and the Women Against Military Madness' "Tackling Torture at the Top" Committee. Come to the daily vigils held each weekday at noon in front of the federal courthouse in Minneapolis, programs every Tuesday (7:00 p.m.) at the Mad Hatter's Tea House in St. Paul, a June 23 United Council of Churches program at Richfield United Methodist Church (7:00-9:00 p.m.), a June 26 Center for Victims of Torture outdoor event honoring torture survivors (11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.), a June 26 showing of the film "Torturing Democracy" at Walker Church (7:00 p.m.), and a June 27 forum (3 to 5 pm) on torture at Plymouth Congregational Church. (For more information, see www.worldwidewamm.org/calendar.html.)
The last time I personally delivered a letter to the U.S. Attorney's office in Minneapolis, I almost got arrested. I have learned my lesson. This time I would submit our group's letter via email to our local U.S. Attorney, B. Todd Jones.
So I went to the site for the U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota and found the following on the "Contact Us" link: "This form should only be used to submit comments concerning the content and appearance of the District of Minnesota website."
Well, my only comment "concerning the content and appearance" of the website was that I had no comment concerning the content and appearance of the website. Was this the open and accessible government I heard would result from the 2008 election?
I checked the United States Attorney General's website. Comments could indeed be submitted there, so maybe I just hadn't found the right page for his Minnesota counterpart.
Surely my Congressman could help. He'd know an email address where I could send this letter. I left a message, and after I came back from a walk, Betty from Congressman Ellison's office had left me a return message. She told me she didn't know what website I had gone to, but just go on the U.S. Attorney's website and there's a box in which to put my message. I called her back, and she went on her computer and read the same thing I had read previously. "Oh," she said. No email.
While neither the news columns of the StarTribune nor the idiot box's news shows ever mention the phrase, a small group of us are demanding accountability for torture. Virtually every weekday since Nov. 12, 2009, we have conducted a daily one-hour vigil in front of the U.S. Courthouse, otherwise known as the Federal Building, in Minneapolis. B. Todd Jones, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota, has his offices in that building. Regrettably, Mr. Jones has forgotten we are a nation of laws. Usually the vigil is only a single person, dressed in an orange jumpsuit and a black hood, with a sign and sometimes with leaflets.
Our efforts have had to confront the "what-First-Amendment?" response of court security personnel. I was the guinea pig on the first day of the vigil. After about ten minutes sitting there with my sign that said "I Am Waiting" on one side and "For Justice" on the other, three guards approached me from different angles and asked me to remove my hood. They frisked me, asked for an i.d., refused to let me go retrieve a cap that I had a half block away (it was cold and windy that day), checked me for federal warrants, and told me I couldn't wear the hood. I told them about the First Amendment and that people had been wearing such hoods in demonstrations all across the country, even in front of the White House. The fellow in charge told me there was a Minnesota law prohibiting it, and that even if a lawyer argued the Minnesota law didn't apply, I couldn't wear the hood because it was alarming to people. I asked if my sign and orange jumpsuit alarmed people, would I have to stop using them as well? He said he would talk to those people instead. I suggested that if there were any place that the First Amendment should apply, surely it would apply in front of the Federal Building.
All things being equal, B. Todd Jones will be the next U.S. Attorney for Minnesota. As the Strib notes, the President traditionally accepts the recommendation of home-state Senators of their party when they suggest nominees for these jobs. See Coleman, Norm; Bush, George W.; and Paulose, Rachel.
That example is poignant, because of the massive difference between Paulose's reign of terror in the U.S. Attorney's office and what is expected by several sources in the local legal community to be a strongly justice-minded tenure for Jones.
Of course, simply keeping the Office of the United States Attorney out of the political tabloid pages and providing effective legal leadership would be great first steps.
(One of these days I'll just set Smit's diaries on Heffelfinger/Paulose/Purge-gate to go automatically to the frontpage... - promoted by MNCampaignReport)
Nick Coleman, the Star Tribune star columnist, seems to be the first in the local mainstream media to pick up the Heffelfinger / Paulose story, first reported in my diaries here and here. His piece in the Strib today contains several interesting quotes from Mr. Heffelfinger himself, and also brings up the key fact, mentioned in the KSTP broadcast, that Mr. Heffelfinger was not invited to Ms. Paulose's investiture ceremony:
"Rachel Paulose put together the guest list, and why I was not on the guest list, only she can answer," says Heffelfinger.
Paulose's spokesperson, Jeanne Cooney, claimed that Paulose and Heffelfinger get along "very well," but said:
"I'm not going to discuss Rachel's personal investiture invitation list to anybody. It was a public event. Anybody who wanted to go could have gone."
This just adds fuel to the flames of speculation that Heffelfinger was targeted, though Mr. Heffelfinger claims once again in Coleman's piece that he "left for [his] own reasons."
But Coleman's piece ultimately does a disservice to the story by getting key facts in the saga wrong. Read below the jump to see where Coleman's piece went off-track.
(I tried to wait, but this stuff is too good not to promote. I've had a couple of well-placed folks tell me there's probably nothing to this, but with research like this, it's becoming a bit more difficult to accept.....read on. - promoted by MNCampaignReport)
MNCR: Edited gently to make the images less site-layout-killing.
A week ago, I wrote a diary about Minnesota's new United States Attorney, Rachel Paulose, and her possible connection to the "attorney purge" scandal currently engulfing the White House and the Department of Justice. I speculated that the resignation of the previous U.S.A., Thomas Heffelfinger, was related to the current scandal, and it seemed clear to me that the 33-year-old Paulose was chosen because of her her political connections to the conservative establishment and the Republican Party rather than her being the most qualified candidate for the job.
On Tuesday, Minnesota Public Radio interviewed Tom Heffelfinger, and he claimed that politics played no role in his resignation:
The former U.S. attorney for Minnesota says he never felt political pressure from the White House that allegedly led to the firings last year of eight other U.S. attorneys around the country. On Tuesday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admitted the firings were mishandled, but rejected calls for him to resign. Tom Heffelfinger stepped down from the Minnesota post a year ago, but he says politics wasn't the reason.
[...]
Tom Heffelfinger resigned his post as U.S. attorney in Minneapolis last February. He had served two stints -- the first from September 1991 to April 1993, and then again from September 2001 to February 2006.
He says no one ever pressured him to leave his post or asked him to leave. He resigned based on a personal decision, driven by his career and his family finances. Moreover, he says he was not pressured to investigate Democrats.
"I got no direction whatsoever at any time during this administration, or my last tour as U.S. attorney, to consider politics," he said. "To the contrary, partisan considerations are irrelevant to a public integrity investigation."
Is he telling the truth, or just being a good soldier for the Bush administration and the Republican team? Keep in mind that Heffelfinger is a Republican through and through, and thus has motive not to rock the boat by involving himself in this scandal. The City Pageslabeled Heffelfinger a "Republican spin doctor" for his role in an investigation into theft at Metropolitan Council Transit Operations. He was appointed as U.S. Attorney by both Bush I and Bush II, ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for Hennepin County Attorney in 1986, and donates heavily to Republican candidates. Based on my investigation into the internal Justice Department documents released recently by the House Judiciary Committee (available at their website), my investigation reveals that there is a good chance that Heffelfinger was one of the U.S. Attorneys originally targeted for dismissal by officials at the Department of Justice and the White House.
