Terror scare paves way for police-state measures

By the Editorial Board

5 August 2004

In the wake of Sunday’s declaration of an “orange alert,” unprecedented
security measures have been implemented at key financial institutions in
Washington, New York and Newark, New Jersey. Hundreds of heavily armed
local and federal police have been deployed around the New York Stock
Exchange and the Citicorp Center in Manhattan, the Prudential Financial
building in Newark, and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund
buildings in Washington.

Checkpoints have been set up where trucks and private vehicles are stopped
and searched in random fashion—a violation of constitutional safeguards
against arbitrary searches. Bridges and tunnels leading into New York have
been closed to commercial traffic. Police armed with automatic weapons have
been posted on downtown street corners and sent into subway stations,
trains and buses, arbitrarily demanding identity proofs and going through
people’s belongings.

The terror alert has been used as the pretext for virtually walling off the
Capitol building and its environs, even though no public institutions were
named in Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge’s Sunday announcement of the
alert, and the Senate sergeant-at-arms acknowledged that the alleged
intelligence prompting it contained no threat to the Capitol. A ring of 14
police checkpoints and concrete barriers has been set up around the
Capitol, Senate office buildings, the Library of Congress and the Supreme
Court.

The closure of an entire street near the Capitol, without any consultation
with local officials, prompted Washington Mayor Anthony Williams to charge
the federal government with transforming “the symbols of American freedom
and democracy” into “fortresses of fear.” His spokesman said, “It scares
people. This is not Beirut.”

Even the Washington Post, which has avidly supported the Bush
administration’s “anti-terror” measures and the war in Iraq, published an
editorial Wednesday protesting that the barricading of the Capitol “makes a
mockery of our claim to be a free and open society.”

The Post reported that federal officials were considering further
restrictions, this time around the White House and the Treasury Department,
including limitations on truck traffic and the fencing off of sidewalks.
Officials in both Washington and New York said the police measures would
continue indefinitely.

These police-state procedures are being taken despite acknowledgments from
Bush administration officials on Monday that the Al Qaeda surveillance of
financial institutions cited by Ridge as the supposed basis for the terror
alert occurred more than three years ago, well before the 9/11 attacks.
Various officials admitted that the government had no information that the
surveillance was continuing, and had no knowledge of a specific or current
plot against any of the named sites.

Monday’s revelations of the dated character of the purported intelligence
prompted sections of the media—which uncritically parroted Ridge’s initial
claims—to give some expression to the widespread popular belief that the
Bush administration concocted the terror alert for political reasons.

The government responded with new and more lurid claims, telling the New
York Times Tuesday that, in addition to evidence of past surveillance of
financial institutions, it had a “separate intelligence stream” pointing to
a possible terrorist attack on financial institutions “in August or
September.” The Times quoted a “senior intelligence official” as
saying, “Al Qaeda is moving toward the execution stage of attacks here in
the homeland.”

This was the sum total of the supposed new intelligence revealed to the
Times, but on Wednesday the newspaper dutifully accepted the hollow claims
of unnamed Homeland Security officials as good coin, turning them into a
front-page lead story. The television networks took their cue from the
Times, leading their evening news reports with dire threats of imminent Al
Qaeda attacks.

The Socialist Equality Party entirely opposes all of the “security”
measures imposed in the wake of Ridge’s terror alert, and gives no credence
to the amorphous and unsubstantiated “threats” that have allegedly prompted
their implementation. It is abundantly clear that the motive for the terror
alert is political. It is calculated to promote the reelection of George
Bush and ensure that the November election is held in an atmosphere of fear.

Over the past several months, as the situation facing the US in Iraq has
deteriorated and the crisis of the administration intensified, raising the
prospect that Bush could lose the 2004 election, government officials have
mounted a relentless propaganda campaign on the theme of a terrorist attack
occurring on or near election day. Less than a month ago, the
administration leaked reports to the press that it was conducting internal
discussions on the possibility of canceling the elections outright in the
event of a terrorist act.

The new terror hysteria being mounted by the government and the media must
serve as a warning that the danger of an election-period provocation is
very real. The aim would be either to stampede the voters into reelecting
Bush, or close down the election altogether.

It is instructive to review the events of the past month. On July 8, Ridge
held a bizarre news conference in which he declared that an Al Qaeda attack
aimed at “disrupting the democratic process” was in “the operational
stage.” As usual, Ridge presented no evidence to substantiate this claim.
Notwithstanding the lurid content of his warnings, he declined to raise the
terror alert from yellow to orange.

The media adopted a largely skeptical attitude toward Ridge’s announcement.
Three days later, Newsweek magazine reported that Homeland Security and
Justice Department officials were discussing the legal basis for canceling
the elections. The response of the major news outlets was to downplay the
story and denounce those who raised the obvious dictatorial implications of
such discussions, while cautioning the administration against any attempt
to close down the election. Later that month, the House of Representatives
passed a unanimous resolution opposing any postponement or cancellation of
the November election.

With this latest terror warning, the administration has upped the ante,
concocting an even more shocking threat and implementing sweeping police-
state measures in New York, New Jersey and Washington.

Anyone who denies that the Bush administration is capable of using the
threat of terrorism to manipulate, and even cancel, the November election—
such as Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman, who declared such
suspicions “madness”—is himself ignoring the plain facts. What, after all,
was the invasion of Iraq, but a cynical and calculated use of the terrorist
threat, employing outright lies, to drag the country into war?

Ridge himself used his Sunday announcement to campaign for Bush’s
reelection, declaring that the intelligence ostensibly prompting the terror
alert was obtained only because of “the President’s leadership in the war
against terror.” On Tuesday, at a press conference held at the Citicorp
Center in Manhattan, Ridge once against raised the specter of a terror
attack aimed at disrupting the elections.

The Bush administration is a criminal government, whose leading personnel,
from Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney on down, have no allegiance to
democratic procedures. They are prepared to say and do anything to hold
onto power.

The police cordon that has been set up around the Capitol is entirely
consistent with a conspiracy to stage a provocation on or near election
day, and facilitate unilateral and extra-constitutional measures by the
executive branch, without any debate or consent by Congress. The measures
that have been taken are calculated to intimidate not only the general
public, but the congressmen and senators as well.

The administration’s arguments justifying the wholesale abrogation of civil
liberties are by no means limited to an emergency response to an immediate
threat. If actions that occurred more than three years ago can be used to
turn the country’s financial and political centers into no-go zones, then
the imposition of police-state measures is not conditional on any imminent
danger.

The Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, John Kerry, have
backed the terror scare. Kerry brusquely disassociated himself from the
remarks of former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who charged on Sunday that
the Bush administration had concocted the terror alert to overshadow the
just-completed Democratic convention and play up the one issue that,
according to opinion polls, favors the current administration—its supposed
leadership in the war against terrorism. A spokesman for Kerry said the
Democratic candidate did not question Ridge’s motives and supported the
security measures. Kerry’s only criticism was that Bush had not acted more
quickly and decisively in the “war on terror.”

Ridge’s naming of financial institutions as the ostensible targets in his
Sunday announcement—as well as the decision of the corporate-controlled
media to fully embrace it—points to immediate concerns underlying the
latest terror scare. Corporate and banking circles see mounting signs of an
extraordinarily dangerous economic and financial crisis. The record rise in
oil prices, in particular, has raised fears of a highly destabilizing
financial situation, with all of the explosive social implications of a
sharp rise in prices and collapse of the superficial “recovery.” This has
imparted a new element of crisis to an election already fraught with
political and social tensions.

It should be recalled that in 1973-74, when OPEC quadrupled petroleum
prices at the time of the Yom Kipur war between Israel and the Arab
countries, the government of Edward Heath responded by posting troops at
Heathrow airport outside of London. It was subsequently revealed that there
were discussions at the time within the British state of overriding
democratic procedures and imposing martial law.

The near-term consideration behind the latest terror alert is the attempt
by Bush and company to manipulate the election in order to boost their
chances against their Democratic competitors. But there are more
fundamental considerations, which are shared by both parties. Kerry and the
Democrats are neither able nor willing to oppose the police-state measures
of the Bush administration because they are mounting the most right-wing
Democratic campaign in modern history. They have fully signed onto the “war
on terrorism,” and are seeking to outflank Bush by promoting Kerry’s
military credentials and presenting him as a more effective and ruthless
commander-in-chief.

What is involved here is the complete militarization of American society.
It is dictated by the interests and aims of the US ruling elite represented
by both parties, whatever their tactical differences. US imperialism,
driven by the mounting contradictions of American and world capitalism, is
engaged in a drive for global hegemony, and nothing, including the
democratic rights and living standards of the American working class, must
be allowed to stand in the way.

With the collaboration of the corporate-controlled media, the financial
oligarchy and its political agents are conditioning the American people for
the destruction of civil liberties and the transition to dictatorial forms
of rule. They are setting the stage for unprecedented state violence and
repression.

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