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Hot off the presses. The San Antonio Chapter of the ACLU weighs in on the 1 million dollar grant given to St. Mary's University School of Law by the Department of Defense to "study how to limit the Freedom of Information Act." Below is an open letter to the community. We have also started a petition campaign to ask St. Mary's to give the money back: www.GiveItBackStMarys.com. Dear Dr. Cotrell :
This is an open letter to the San Antonio community regarding a proposed Department of Defense grant to fund research on the Freedom of Information Act and corresponding state statutes governing disclosure of government information.
St. Mary’s University issued a statement regarding the application by the University’s Center for Terrorism Law for a $1,000,000 grant from the US. Department of Defense to study “Homeland Defense and Civil Support Threat Information Collection.” The press has reported the purpose of this grant would be to study the Freedom of Information Act. The statement by the university indicates it has not completed the process for submitting the final proposal for the grant. We assume, however, the proposal must be in its final stage of completion since it includes a recommendation for a national conference when the actual study is complete.
One focus of the proposed study, according to St. Mary’s University, would be on the protection of civil liberties. Members of the ACLU are very interested in events, laws, policies and practices which impact civil liberties, and we want to make sure that if St. Mary’s receives this grant, that a powerful voice in support of civil liberties is heard at the Center for Terrorism Law.
It seems to us that at present the point of view of civil libertarians is not well represented at the Center for Terrorism Law. The military mindset seems to dominate. Although Professor Jeffrey Addicott, the Director of the Center, is putatively well versed in matters of human rights, he is a career military officer. Consultants for the center consist of one retired Army lieutenant general, two retired Army major generals, a colonel who is an Army Reservist, and an active duty major in the Air Force. The only civilian consultant is a student who is studying to be a librarian.
While the Center for Terrorism Law claims it “provides a service as a partner in the San Antonio, Texas community” the list of local community affiliations seem limited to those directly or indirectly connected with the military. The Center is supported by the United States Air Force Research Laboratory through a subcontract between the Air Force and the University of Texas at San Antonio. In addition, the Center is affiliated with the Air Intelligence Agency at Lackland Air Force Base whose mission is, according to the Center’s website:
“o deliver multi-source intelligence products, applications, services and resources expertise in the areas of information warfare, command and control warfare, security, acquisition, foreign weapons systems and technology, and treaty monitoring, to support Air Force major commands, Air Force components, and joint and national decision makers.”
This mission statement mentions nothing about civil liberties.
The Center for Terrorism Law also claims affiliations with the United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, which is concerned with “national defense of the homeland,” and with the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Israel. The latter “focuses solely on the subject of terrorism.”
One of the Center’s private sector affiliates arouses particular interest. The Center’s website lists TATE, Incorporated (Trusted Agent for Technology and Engineering) as a “community” affiliate. Since the corporate headquarters is in Germantown, Maryland, we find it difficult to see the San Antonio connection. Our concern was further heightened when we read that, according to the Center’s website, “TATE’s current customers include the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, Defense Intelligence Agency and other government agencies,” and that it is “the nation’s leading contractor providing . . . Peacetime Government Detention (PGD), Hostage Detention (HD), . . . plans and operations and other sensitive training support to the U.S. government.” Our observation is that TATE, Incorporated, does not include civil liberties in its corporate vocabulary.
As you can see, although the Center for Terrorism Law expresses concern for protection of civil liberties, its organization, staffing and affiliations strongly imply that civil liberties is not a priority. We are very concerned about this oversight.
We are also concerned about the fact that the grant St. Mary’s is seeking would be from the federal government—specifically from the Department of Defense—although the focus of the grant proposal is to be on state laws. This raises an unavoidable question: Why should the U.S. military fund a project whose goal is to write model legislation that could be used by state governments to deal with freedom of information?
Carlos Guerra, columnist for the San Antonio Express-News said recently, “Give me a break. The money is from the Defense Department, which has never championed transparency or open government.” The San Antonio ACLU agrees with Guerra.
The whole project upon which St. Mary’s is about to embark seems to beg for input from local and state organizations which are not connected with government and which have a stake in strengthening civil liberties in the United States and in Texas. The State of Texas, we emphasize, places individual liberties above all other public values. That is clear because the writers of our state constitution put the Bill of Rights in Article I and explicitly declared that Article I would take precedence over any other provision of the state constitution or laws.
We are confident that you share our concern for the need of protecting civil liberties, since there is a competing need for national security because of the possibility of attacks by terrorists. We do not want the war on terrorism to morph into a war on civil liberties, although we feel that the assault on civil liberties is well under way by the federal government and the Center for Terrorism Law can either help to turn the tide in favor of liberty, or become complicit in its erosion.
Because of our concerns, we urge the following:
• For the purposes of the study for which the university is seeking a grant, legal scholars from the ACLU and like-minded organizations should be made active partners in the research which will be conducted by the Center for Terrorism Law. Since security issues and civil liberties are the two main concerns of the study, civil libertarians should have input that is proportional to those whose focus is security.
• Before the final draft of the grant proposal is submitted to the Department of Defense, the draft should be made public.
• The university should clarify why a federal grant from a Department of Defense would focus on state laws on information access.
• In the face of efforts by the Executive Branch of the federal government to thwart efforts by the public to gain access to government documents under the Freedom of Information Act, one purpose of the study should be to find ways to make it easier for the public to know what our governments are doing.
Representatives of our local ACLU board would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience to discuss these issues.
Sincerely,
Patrick John Filyk
President,
SA Chapter ACLU
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