At first we thought that some of these things couldn't possibly be true in the United States in 2005, but subsequent research has verified them. Throughout the original letter, we have added additional information in the form of footnotes.

Warning, Things Have Changed -

Be Careful What You Are Caught Reading, Writing and Saying!

First of all, the Administration's claim that the Patriot Act has not been used to report on what library books you've been reading is simply not true.

A $300,000 government study has just determined that federal, state and local agents have been demanding these records from libraries. The government has also been demanding sales records from stores where you buy books.

Refusing to turn them over is illegal; so is telling anyone you've even been asked to do it.

No legal probable cause must exist, just a government version of "need to know."

Even fighting this has been deemed illegal.

Most librarians aren't doing this.  Consequently, your name and the books you read in the library can go into government data bank. The same is true for books you buy at your local bookstore. Retail stores like scuba shops have even been asked to turn over lists of customers going back three years.

It was President John F. Kennedy that said that libraries should represent places where the electorate can find free, unfettered, uncensored sources of information.¹

If you think that this federal activity is limited to "suspicious characters," consider this recent example that shreds our Constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and freedom of dissent.  

A man in a college library in Utah mentioned to a women next to him, "George Bush is out of control." A security guard heard him and called the police.  A short time later four local policemen showed up, handcuffed him, and led him out of the library.

Fortunately, he was soon released, but not until people witnessing the arrest undoubted made the assumption that he must be a terrorist or constitute some sort of a threat. The man was a former public defender and he looked like any average U.S., WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant) citizen. 

Big Brother Can Legally Read Your Personal E-Mail

If you were ever under the illusion that you e-mail was private, forget it. The government can intercept it, record it, and use it as grounds to arrest you. They can obtain records from Internet service providers showing who you write to and what web pages you have visited.

Government agents can also request personal bank records, health records, and records from your employers.

People Are Disappearing in the Night

Under the Patriot Act the U.S. government can arrest people and lock them up indefinitely in a secret location—without ever charging them with a crime, letting them speak to a lawyer, or allowing them to tell friends or family members where they are.

This just "disappear."

Today, anyone can be named "an enemy combatant"—a vague and essentially meaningless term—without the government having to justify the charge. Plus, the government can keep all of this totally secret under the expanded government secrets act.

Have these people committed any crime? With few exceptions they haven't; they primarily represent people of the "wrong" nationality and the "wrong" religion. U.S. citizens are not exempt.

Men, women and children have been rudely roused from their beds and simply hauled away at gunpoint with no explanation as to why. Recently, a mother, 19 year-old daughter and her father were pulled from their beds, hauled away at 5:30 a.m. and put in solitary confinement—until it was determined (due in large measure to media exposure) that they were in no way associated with terrorism.

Attorney General Ashcroft² originally bragged that more than 1,000 such people were arrested—at least he bragged until he found that the public was asking too many questions about "why."  Now the arrests tend to be conducted in secret.

This is the United States in 2005!

But it gets still worse.

Some of the people that were whisked off in the night were sent to countries where brutal torture was an accepted way of interrogation. We know now that people who were eventually deemed innocent underwent months of torture.

Today, hundreds of these people languish in prisons with no charges filed against them. They have no access to legal representation and no effective way of communicating with friends and relatives. Some have written to family members claiming that they are not getting adequate food or water.³

It has been established by government records that many as many as 30 prisoners have tried to commit suicide in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba alone. When the U.S. government caught onto the negative publicity this was generating, they abruptly stopped issuing this information.

It's no secret that the people arrested are often quickly moved to other countries where the Administration assumes that U.S. law and even Title IV of the Geneva Convention, which very clearly forbids these things, can simply be ignored.

Many of these people came to the United States to escape brutal regimes in their home countries. Now they are being sent back, even when the Administration knows they face torture and death for having sought asylum in the United States.

Things like this can't happen in the United States?

Sorry; do your research; these things are happening.

There is videotaped evidence showing that law enforcement officials in plain clothes called "agent provocateurs" are successfully infiltrating peaceful protest groups and  encouraging them to break the law so that people in the group can be arrested. These people have even gone so far as to suggest planting bombs and calling in bomb threats.

This operations have resulted from FBI requests to local police that plain clothes officers infiltrate groups, even though those groups are engaged in perfectly legal activities.

Although these things are blatantly unconstitutional, in the panic after 9/11, the U.S. Constitution simply started being ignored and circumvented. Now, the Patriot Act, which most people know little about, other than its title, has made these things perfectly legal.

Those who object to all this are called "unpatriotic" and a threat to national security.

It is asserted that our enemies are jealous of our freedom. But, in the United States our enemy is clearly having less and less to be jealous about.

In a sense, "the evil ones" are winning, and their greatest allies are those of us who are ignoring all this while our hard-won rights and freedoms are being taken away.

This is not a liberal-conservative issue, it's simply an issue of the guaranteed freedoms that this country has held up as an example to the world for some 200 years.  

¹ The entire quote by President John F. Kennedy is posted in many libraries and is worth repeating. 

If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas from more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all except the censors (ital. in original).  We must know all facts and hear all alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors.  For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our destiny."

²  Alberto R. Gonzales was sworn in as the nation's 80th Attorney General on February 3, 2005. However, this letter was written before then and Attorney General Ashcroft was largely responsible for these decisions. Given Gonzales statements before his appointment, a change in the policy is quite doubtful.

³ Even though the government disputes the fact that prisoners are not adequately taken care of and the Red Cross tries to monitor this, we do know that prisoners are being  held in solitary confinement in small cells.  Windows are covered over, never providing sunlight, and interior lights are kept on 24-hours a day. And, of course, from the pictures, we know about the torture. (Photography is forbidden in these prisons.)

Unfortunately, our actions have set a new and much lower standard around the world for how captured U.S. soldiers cold be treated.

As a result of these arrests the subsequent treatment, the very people who could help officials root out terrorists in their communities have become distrusting of officials. Even when these people are a victim of crime they fear coming forward and reporting it.  This, of course is making them easy prey to criminals. The Administration has succeeded in alienating the very people that could help them the most in the fight against terrorism.

There is no question that many of the things detailed in this letter are contrary to guarantees clearly spelled out in the U.S. Constitution, not to mention the Geneva Convention adopted by countries around the world  The administration has simply moved to make these things irrelevant.  

You may wonder what was happening with your Washington representatives during all this.  The Administration simply did an end run around them. There is total agreement that not a single member of Congress read the original Patriot Act before they signed it.  It was made impossible because it was 350 pages long and it was printed at 3:45 a.m. on the morning before the vote. Efforts to delay the vote until the Bill could be studied were denied. As it turned out, parts of the Bill they ended up signing had previously been rejected. But, right after 9/11 no politician wanted to suffer political backlash by vetoing a Bill with the name of Patriot Act. It goes without saying that the last minute timing was also designed to make public review and debate impossible.

Even the Administration's own Justice Department issued a report saying that the activities being conducted were undoubtedly illegal and unconstitutional.   The report was ignored.

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