WaPo Warns USA Needs More Narrative Control As Pentagon Ramps Up Narrative Control

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Caitlin Johnstone

[dropcap]D[/dropcap]o you lay awake at night terrified that the Russians are able to control your mind with information warfare while the US government’s slavish devotion to democratic values leaves it powerless to stop them? Me neither. But according to The Washington Post, whose sole owner is a CIA contractor and Pentagon board member bent on hijacking the underlying infrastructure of the economy, we should be.

WaPo columnist David Ignatius, who has been one of the more hyperbolic promulgators of western Russia hysteria in written media, has published an article titled “Why America is losing the information war to Russia” about a new book by former State Department undersecretary for public diplomacy Richard Stengel. Stengel and Ignatius engage in a joyful Red Scare frolic with the exuberance of two little boys with a box of spray paints, each trying to one-up the other in hysterical apocalyptic ominousness about the way evil, authoritarian governments like Russia have been able to weaponize information while freedom-loving democracies can only look on in passive despair.

“The cruel paradox of the Internet, once hailed as a liberating force, is that it empowers governments that control information and enfeebles those that let it run free,” warns Ignatius.

“[Authoritarian governments] have gone from fearing the flow of information to exploiting it,” cautions Stengel. “They understand that the same tools that spread democracy can engineer its undoing.”

Unsurprisingly, at no point during this brotherly romp does Ignatius bother to make mention of the fact that Stengel is actually on record saying he supports the use of propaganda and believes the US government should be using it on its own citizens.

“Basically, every country creates their own narrative story and, you know, my old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the ‘chief propagandist’ job,” Stengel said last year at an event organized by the shockingly ubiquitous narrative management firm Council on Foreign Relations.

“I’m not against propaganda,” Stengel said. “Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population, and I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.”

When an audience member objected to what he’d just heard, Stengel curtly dismissed him and ended the talk.

So anyway, that’s what the CIA/Pentagon/plutocracy-tied Washington Post wants you to be sure of: that evil governments are controlling your mind with information warfare, and that the US government is struggling to rescue you from that fate. Lucky for you, this report just so happens to be coming out at the same time as we’re learning that the Pentagon is already currently working on a program to protect you from wrongthink by controlling your access to information.

A recent Bloomberg article titled “U.S. Unleashes Military to Fight Fake News, Disinformation” reports that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding a new project called the Semantic Forensics program with which “the military research agency hopes it can spot fake news with malicious intent before going viral.”

“If successful, the system after four years of trials may expand to detect malicious intent and prevent viral fake news from polarizing society,” Bloomberg reports.

DARPA (formerly ARPA) is a top contender among some very stiff competition for the absolute creepiest of all US government agencies. Journalist Yasha Levine has done a lot of work documenting the way the agency has been intimately involved in internet surveillance since before the internet was even really a thing, beginning in the 1960s with its ARPANET program whose technologies went on to form the foundation of the World Wide Web. DARPA is also engaged in such charming activities as exploring ways to knit AI into human neurology, funding programs to control America’s election infrastructure, pouring billions of dollars into the creation of a robot army and constructing robotic insects which can crawl up walls.

Futurists have long envisioned a utopia where mankind reaps the benefits of soaring technological innovations which will overcome our every obstacle and lead us to an unprecedented state of human thriving. What they failed to account for was sociopathic government agencies like DARPA being intimately involved in those technologies from the very beginning.

Power is being able to control what happens. Absolute power is being able to control what people thinkabout what happens. If you can control what happens, you can have power until the public gets sick of your bullshit and tosses you out on your ass. If you can control what people think about what happens, you can have power forever. As long as you can control how people are interpreting circumstances and events, there’s no limit to the evils you can get away with.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. Governments understand this and so do their propagandists, and so, increasingly, do the rank-and-file public. Which is why you’ve now got establishment narrative managers like CNN’s Jim Sciutto saying things like “Let’s please ban the word ‘narrative’ from our discussion of the news and this president. There is only one version of the facts and the truth.” Mass media propagandists would like nothing better than to have people cease paying attention to the concept of narrative and go back to believing that when they turn on CNN they are receiving objective truth from the authoritative arbiters of absolute reality.

But that cat’s out of the bag. What has been seen cannot be unseen. A large number of people are aware that there are some very powerful forces who have a vested interest in controlling the thoughts that are in their head, and that number is growing every day. These powerful forces have responded to this new development by becoming increasingly ham-fisted in regulating the public’s access to ideas and information, and now it’s a race to see if they can slam the gates on us before we escape our cage forever.

_______________________

The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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This is a dispatch from our ongoing series by Caitlin Johnstone

About the Author

Caitlin Johnstone is a brave journalist, political junkie, relentless feminist, champion of the 99 percent. And a powerful counter-propaganda tactician. 

 Creative Commons License  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

THIS WORK IS LICENSED UNDER A Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

 





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Dissent Is Being Criminalized Right Under Our Noses

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Mike Siegel

“Federal prosecutors could charge terrorism if actions might ‘affect’ or ‘influence’ a government policy.”

If you painted “Black Lives Matter” on a wall to advocate against police violence, that could be prosecuted as terrorism.

Many of us are deeply concerned about the recent wave of mass shootings and hate crimes that have taken place across the United States. As the Department of Justice reported , in 2018 alone there were 25 race-based terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, each committed by an alleged white supremacist. Immediate action is needed to address this crisis and tragedies like the Aug. 3 shooting in El Paso, Texas.

McCaul—Texas politico, Homeland Security, Republican, "terrorist expert"—you connect the dots. A land that specialises in producing dangerous jingo reactionaries.

So I read with interest a recent press release  of Rep. Michael McCaul. (1)—the Republican incumbent in the Texas 10th Congressional District and my opponent in the 2018 election—in which he announced a new bill  to respond to domestic terrorism.

My hopes for reasonable legislation were quickly dashed, however, and replaced by deep concern.

The proposed bill would create a broad definition of “domestic terrorism” to include any attempt to “affect” or “influence” government policy or actions. And it would include property damage—even attempted property damage—as a terrorist act subject to a 25-year prison sentence.

In other words, if you opposed the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock and wanted the government to revoke the pipeline permit, you might be considered a terrorist.

If you painted “Black Lives Matter” on a wall to advocate against police violence, that could be terrorism, too.

And if you threw a rock at a bank window to take a stand against the 1% —even if you missed—you could spend half your life in a federal prison.

So far as I can tell, McCaul and his co-sponsors are taking advantage of a moment of profound insecurity to advance a bill that will criminalize dissent.

A Close Reading

The full bill is less than four pages, and would accomplish three main things: 1) define the “intent” necessary to commit a crime of domestic terrorism; 2) identify five sets of qualifying offenses; and 3) punish unsuccessful “attempts” and “conspiracies” to commit these offenses.

The definition of “intent” shows the bill’s sweeping impact, far beyond responding to recent mass shootings.

In regard to five criminal offenses, an act is “domestic terrorism” if is performed “with the intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence, affect, or retaliate against the policy or conduct of a government.”

As a civil rights lawyer, I’m trained to look for vague language, because that is often the gravest threat to constitutional rights. Here, federal prosecutors could charge terrorism if actions might “affect” or “influence” a government policy. This is an extremely broad definition of terroristic intent.

Five crimes are included in the bill’s broad definition of domestic terrorism: murder, kidnapping, aggravated assault, simple assault and property damage. With respect to the crimes against people, these are already punishable under existing state and federal law, although the bill would impose longer sentences, such as 30 years for assault. Property damage would result in a 25-year sentence, far beyond the bounds of any state vandalism law.

The final key aspect of the bill has to do with how it treats unsuccessful attempts and conspiracies: “Attempts or conspiracies to commit an offense … shall be punished in the same manner as a completed act of such offense.” In other words, don’t even find yourself in the same room as someone contemplating political property damage—or you can be deemed a terrorist, too.

Context: Standing Rock and “Antifa”

The bill includes the word “conveyance” in its definition of property damage, which is a signal that the Standing Rock protests were likely a consideration.

On the same day as McCaul’s press release, The Intercept reported  that American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers is lobbying to enact legislation that will enhance criminal penalties for any pipeline damage. With the support of the American Legislative Exchange Council, it has enacted laws in nine states. Oklahoma, for example, created a crime punishable by up to 10 years in jail for damage to a pipeline—again, far beyond existing federal penalties.

The McCaul bill mirrors this approach, and creates major federal crimes for property damage connected to a political cause.

For all of the crimes in question, from murder to vandalism, existing penal codes give prosecutors ample room to bring cases. Nothing is stopping federal authorities from charging mass shooters with hate crimes or crimes of violence and seeking sentences up to and including life in prison and the death penalty.

But there is currently no law that would empower federal prosecutors to charge protesters with major federal crimes for property damage caused during a protest.

“Bree Newsome Bass, who scaled a flagpole in Charleston, S.C., to remove a Confederate flag would be considered a terrorist.”

While this bill is rolled out, President Trump is ranting daily against “antifa” (i.e., anti-fascists). Recent news footage showed clashes in Portland, Ore ., between white supremacist groups and anti-fascist demonstrators. Were those confrontations tantamount to domestic terrorism? The McCaul bill would give federal prosecutors near blanket authority to charge either group with terrorist charges. And Trump has already made clear which group he would focus on.

There are countless examples of protest activity that McCaul would open to terrorism charges. As for Bree Newsome Bass,  who scaled a flagpole in Charleston, S.C., to remove a Confederate flag? She’d be considered a terrorist. Students at Duke University who toppled a Confederate monument ? Also terrorists.

Under this definition, the Boston Tea Party itself was a terrorist act: “Property damage, with the intent to influence a government policy.”

This is not the way we reduce mass shootings in America. This is not a tool to confront white supremacist attacks. Rather, this is an open invitation to trample the Constitution and give free reign to a dictatorial regime.


(1) QUITE A PIECE OF WORK—ANOTHER GIFT FROM TEXAS
Michael Thomas McCaul Sr. (born January 14, 1962) is an American attorney and politician serving as the U.S. Representative for Texas’s 10th congressional district, since 2005. During 113th, 114th, and 115th Congresses, he served as Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security. Congressman McCaul is a member of the Republican Party. The district stretches from Austin to Houston. As of 2018 he is the fifth-wealthiest member of Congress.[2]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mike Siegel is a former public school teacher and civil rights lawyer. He was the 2018 Democratic nominee in the Texas 10th Congressional District. He is running again in 2020.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS
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The Low to No Cost of Killing a Black Man

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

The Low to No Cost of Killing a Black Man
Glen Ford
BAR executive editor
27 Aug 2019

New York’s feeble slap on the wrist for Eric Garner’s murderer-in-blue is yet more proof that US policing cannot be reformed.

 

About the Author
Leading public intellectual 

Glen Ford is a founding editor of Black Agenda Report (BAR), where he serves as executive editor. He can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com 

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Everyone’s A Conspiracy Theorist, Whether They Know It Or Not

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Caitlin Johnstone

“Our sources are still saying that it looks like suicide, and this is going to set conspiracy theorists abuzz I fear,” said NBC correspondent Ken Dilanian. “NBC News has been hearing all day long that there are no indications of foul play, and that this looks like a suicide and that he hung himself in his cell.”Dilanian, who stumbled over the phrase “conspiracy theorists” in his haste to get it in the first soundbyte, is a known asset of the Central Intelligence Agency. This is not a conspiracy theory, this is a well-documented fact. A 2014 article in The Intercept titled “The CIA’s Mop-Up Man” reveals email exchanges obtained via Freedom of Information Act request between Dilanian and CIA public affairs officers which “show that Dilanian enjoyed a closely collaborative relationship with the agency, explicitly promising positive news coverage and sometimes sending the press office entire story drafts for review prior to publication.” There is no reason to give Dilanian the benefit of the doubt that this cozy relationship has ended, so anything he puts forward can safely be dismissed as CIA public relations.When I mentioned Dilanian’s CIA ties on MSNBC’s Twitter video, MSNBC deleted their tweet and then re-shared it without mentioning Dilanian’s name. Here is a screenshotof the first tweet followed by an embedded link to their current one (which I’ve archivedjust in case):

 

Up until the news broke that Epstein’s autopsy has been unable to readily confirm suicide, mass media headlines everywhere have been unquestioningly blaring that that was known to have been the cause of the accused sex trafficker’s death. This despite the fact that the FBI’s investigation has been explicitly labeling it an “apparent suicide”, and despite the fact that Epstein is credibly believed to have been involved in an intelligence-tied sexual blackmail operation involving many powerful people, any number of whom stood plenty to gain from his death.

So things are moving in a very weird way, and people are understandably weirded out. The response to this from mass media narrative managers has, of course, been to berate everyone as “conspiracy theorists”.

“Jeffrey Epstein: How conspiracy theories spread after financier’s death” reads a BBC headline. “Epstein Suicide Conspiracies Show How Our Information System Is Poisoned” reads one from the New York Times. “Conspiracy Theories Fly Online in Wake of Epstein Death” warns The Wall Street Journal. “Financier Epstein’s Death Disappoints Victims, Launches Conspiracy Theories” reads the headline from US government-funded Voice of America.

These outlets generally match Dilanian’s tone in branding anyone who questions the official story about Epstein’s death as a raving lunatic. Meanwhile, normal human beings all across the political spectrum are expressing skepticism on social media about the “suicide” narrative we’re all being force-fed by the establishment narrative managers, many of them prefacing their skepticism with some variation on the phrase “I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but…”

“I’m not a conspiracy theorist but there are an awful lot of very powerful people who would like to see this Epstein thing go away. Is anyone investigating the guard on duty?” tweeted actor Patricia Heaton.

“I am not into conspiracy theories. But Epstein had destructive information on an extraordinary number of extraordinarily powerful people. It is not easy to commit suicide in prison. Especially after being placed on suicide watch. Especially after already allegedly trying,” tweeted public defender Scott Hechinger.

 

Journalist Abi Wilkinson summed up the silliness of this widespread preface very nicely, tweeting, “‘”I’m not a conspiracy theorist’ is such a weird assertion when you think about it, the idea there’s a binary between believing all conspiracies and flat out rejecting the very concept of conspiracy in all circumstances.”

Indeed, I think it’s fair to say that everyone is a conspiracy theorist if they’re really honest with themselves. Not everyone believes that the official stories about 9/11 and the JFK assassination are riddled with plot holes or what have you, but I doubt that anyone who really sat down and sincerely grappled with the question “Do powerful people conspire?” would honestly deny it. Some are just more self-aware than others about the self-evident reality that powerful people conspire all the time, and it’s only a question of how and with whom and to what extent.

The word “conspire” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or an act which becomes unlawful as a result of the secret agreement”. No sane person would deny that this is a thing that happens, nor that this is likely a thing that happens to some extent among the powerful in their own nation. This by itself is a theory about conspiracy per definition, and it accurately applies to pretty much everyone. Since it applies to pretty much everyone, the label is essentially meaningless, either as a pejorative or as anything else.

The meaningless of the term has been clearly illustrated by Russiagate, whose adherents react with sputtering outrage whenever anyone points out that they’re engaged in a conspiracy theory, despite the self-evident fact that that’s exactly what it is: a theory about a band of powerful Russian conspirators conspiring with the highest levels of the US government. Their objection is not due to a belief that they’re not theorizing about a conspiracy, their objection is due to the fact that a highly stigmatized label that they’re accustomed to applying to other people has been applied to them. The label is rejected because its actual definition is ignored to the point of meaninglessness.

 

tweeted, “I am a ‘conspiracy theorist’. I believe men and women of wealth and power conspire. If you don’t think so, then you are what is called ‘an idiot’. If you believe stuff but fear the label, you are what is called ‘a coward’.” This is what we all must do. The debate must be forcibly moved from the absurd question of whether or not conspiracies are a thing to the important question of which conspiracy theories are valid and to what degree.

And we should probably hurry. Yahoo News reported earlier this month (1) that the FBI recently published an intelligence bulletin describing “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists” as a growing threat, and this was before the recent spate of US shootings got establishment narrative-makers pushing for new domestic terrorism laws. This combined with the fact that we can’t even ask questions about extremely suspicious events like Jeffrey Epstein’s death without being tarred with this meaningless pejorative by the mass media thought police means we’re at extreme risk of being shoved into something far more Orwellian in the near future.

__________________

The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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This is a dispatch from our ongoing series by Caitlin Johnstone

Appendix

Reaction to Yahoo News report

(1)  A brief look at the threads commenting on this news item shows that while (as we might expect given that Yahoo, itself part of the frequently fake news corporate communications system, attracts a lot of older conservative/establishment-believing folks, and that there also paid or volunteer trolls seeding the discussion in favor of the FBI), many people do not agree and are probably prepared to oppose the FBI/Intel power grab to silence independent thinking in America. The discussion is also somewhat muddled by the presence and slants representing liberals who hate Trump, and Trumpites defending the president, both sticking to their positions dogmatically.

Below some examples picked for quality, at random:

12 days ago

The "powers that be" are desperate to discredit the alternative media that is finally providing large sections of the general public with accurate information to counter the propaganda that comes out of the corporate media. The goal is to portray so-called "conspiracy theorists" as mentally-unhinged people who are potentially prone to violence or who will recklessly spread false information in a way that is akin to yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. This will provide the "cover" for more aggressive government crackdowns against purveyors of information who don't toe the line with regard to official government narratives. Documentation that has come to light through freedom-of-information requests, has confirmed that “conspiracy theory” is a pejorative term that was cooked up by the CIA way back in the 60s after the JFK assassination. It is used to try to stigmatize people and deter them, by fear of ridicule, from using their reasoning abilities to see through government propaganda. Among the millions of people who became aware that JFK was not killed by a lone gunman, are the late Jackie Onassis and RFK junior. The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1976 that "Kennedy was probably killed as a result of a conspiracy”. People are convicted of criminal conspiracy all the time. One of the tactics of the government propagandists is to mix nonsense like Elvis still being alive and alien abductions with very real conspiracies like 9/11 which was carried out by traitors within the US government. The “powers that be” are becoming increasingly worried because they know that the internet has exposed their complicity in crimes like 9/11 to millions of people worldwide and the calls to bring the real perpetrators to justice are growing louder every day.

  • 12 days ago
    I don't trust my government. Does that make me a conspiracy theorist??

  • Scruff McGruff

    12 days ago

    Tons of conspiracy theories have come true, and a lot of the time it's parts of the government (like the FBI and CIA) that are involved in it. Now they want to inform you on how bad it might be? Lol.
    It's okay to question things and keep an open mind.
    I feel like these types of articles are designed to suppress independent thought and label and dismiss an entire group of people. Can't be using critical thought when you're supposed to eat up everything the corporate media tells you.
12 days ago
Pointing out FBI's conspiracy theories is now an act of subversion ?
12 days ago
people are getting more accurate with their theories. so now of course the FBI is involved.
  • 12 days ago
    "The document specifically mentions QAnon, a shadowy network that believes in a deep state conspiracy against President Trump"... Then what do you call it when you have a group of FBI agents, CIA operatives, former FBI and CIA directors working on an "insurance plan" if Trump won the election?

  • jini g

    11 days ago

    The so called conspiracy theory are not real "conspiracy theory" because there is no official and convincing explanation. So every theory is a theory, not conspiracy.
    FBI is still largely controlled by deep state.
    BTW, there is not evidence, not quote from FBI document that called Q as domestic terrorist threat. NO EVIDENCE, NO actually link, NO actual document image.

About the Author
Caitlin Johnstone is a brave journalist, political junkie, relentless feminist, champion of the 99 percent. And a powerful counter-propaganda tactician. 

 Creative Commons License  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

THIS WORK IS LICENSED UNDER A Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

 





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‘You don’t have any rights’: CBP agents interrogate US citizen and seize his phone after Venezuela solidarity trip

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Max Blumenthal

Surveillance, US Police State, Venezuela August 3, 2019

The detention of a US citizen returning from Venezuela was an apparent extension of the US government’s efforts to punish citizens who have protested its policy of regime change and economic warfare.

[dropcap]A[/dropcap] US citizen has told The Grayzone that the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) service detained him on his way home from Venezuela and violated his privacy.

Sergio Lazo Torrez, a 31 year-old Nicaraguan-American, said the CBP forced him to open his cellphone, grilled him about his political beliefs, and demanded information about his contact with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Torrez was returning to the Washington, DC area on the evening of August 2 when he was detained by CBP at Dulles International Airport in Vienna, Virginia. He had just participated in a week-long tour of Venezuela with over a dozen US citizens, including this journalist and two other reporters for The Grayzone.

During the trip, the group met with members of local social movements, leaders of workers’ cooperatives, artists, and elected officials. On August 1, the visitors accepted an invitation to meet with Maduro at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas.

The meeting apparently triggered the US government’s decision to target Torrez.

“They said that while I was being held I didn’t have any rights,” Torrez told The Grayzone, referring to the CBP. “I said, ‘Can I call my lawyer?’ They said, ‘No, you don’t have any rights, it doesn’t matter if you call a lawyer. First of all, you can’t even use your phone and second of all, you don’t have any rights to do anything.’”

Like the other US citizens on the trip to Venezuela, Torrez had participated in the Embassy Protection Collective this April and May.

For over a month, peace activists residing in the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC obstructed the seizure of the facility by the US-backed coup administration of opposition leader Juan Guaido. They were besieged for almost two weeks by a mob of right-wing Guaido supporters, who bombarded them with racist, sexist, and homophobic invective.

On May 16, the four final embassy protectors were removed by force by federal agents. They now face prosecution in federal court and possible penalties of one year in prison and $100,000 fines.

Torrez displaying the flag of the Sandinista front in front of the Venezuelan embassy in DC

The detention and interrogation of Torrez was an apparent extension of the US government’s efforts to punish citizens that have protested its policy of regime change and economic warfare against Venezuela’s elected government.

“They kept asked me what kind of relations I had with Maduro and I just said I had none,” Torrez recalled. “[The CBP officer] was like, ‘What was the conversation with him about?’ I said, ‘I just shook his hand and said hi. That’s all I did.’ And they were like, ‘You have pictures with all these people from the government, all these officials.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah it was a picture. We didn’t need to have a conversation.'”

“I think they targeted me for being Latino”

Torrez said that soon after he landed at Dulles, he was subjected to a secondary security check. Then, two CBP officers burst out of a room and summoned him inside. He had been traveling with several other members of the Embassy Protection Collective, but was the only one subjected to an interrogation.

“I think they targeted me for being Latino,” Torrez said. “There were no [white] Americans in the waiting room. And I was one of two Latinos in our group.”

Inside the interrogation room, Torrez said a Latino officer addressed him in Spanish and demanded to know how long he had been a US citizen. From there, the agent began grilling him about his political views, asking if Torrez had any relationship with the Nicaraguan government or had represented Nicaragua at the Sao Paolo Forum that took place this month in Venezuela.

The Sao Paolo Forum is an annual gathering of leftist forces from across the Western hemisphere, and has been caricatured as a confab of terrorists and communists by right-wing Latin American political figures and neoconservative Florida Senator Marco Rubio.

Torrez said he told the CBP agent, “Nope, I don’t belong to any organization.”

“They were trying to go after me in every way possible,” he recounted. “They asked me how long I was married, if I belonged to any military organizations. I said no.”

Then, according to Torrez, the CBP asked him if he supported Maduro: “I said I didn’t vote for Maduro because I’m not Venezuelan, and I don’t comment on foreign politics.”

Torrez told The Grayzone that the officers kept pumping him for info on Maduro, demanding to know if he was friends with the president. Again, he said no. “So they said to me, ‘Why did Jorge Ramos get kicked out of Miraflores when you didn’t?’”

Ramos is the Univision ambush journalist who was briefly held at Venezuela’s presidential palace in February and deported after a hostile 20-minute-long interview in which he attempted to humiliate Maduro, opening the encounter by denouncing the president as a dictator.

Next, the CBP officers asked Torrez if his trip had been organized by Venezuela’s embassy: “I said, no, we don’t even have a Venezuelan embassy any more in the United States.” He also explained to his interrogators that the trip had not been financed by Venezuela’s government, but instead by peace groups operated and supported by US citizens.

“They started going through my browser”

Before long, a CBP agent ordered Torrez to hand over his cellphone: “He just said, ‘Give me the phone or I’m gonna open an investigation.’ And I said, ‘Ok, take it, I’m not gonna open it, that’s my privacy. They said, ‘What do you have to hide?’ And I said, I don’t have anything to hide. The same thing you’re gonna find in my phone you’re gonna find in public.”

When Torrez refused to open his phone for the officers, he said they seized it from him and took it into a separate room for five minutes. He does not know what they did to the phone while it was out of his sight.

Torrez recalled the CBP officers warning him that they could detain him for an extended period for refusing to cooperate. “They were being really intimidating,” he recalled. Eventually, he agreed to their demand to open his phone.

“They started going through my browser,” he said. “They opened my WhatsApp but they didn’t click on the messages. They did write down the email connected to my phone.“

According to journalist Seth Harp, who was detained and had his cellphone searched by CBP while returning from a trip to Mexico City, the CBP justifies invading the privacy of travelers through its Directive No. 3340-049A. This provision permits agents to search anyone’s device without any probably cause.

Those who refuse to relinquish their devices can have them seized. CBP authorizes its agents to use surveillance technology to “not merely to gain access to the device, but to review, copy, and/or analyze its contents.”

Torrez said that throughout his interrogation by CBP, the officers were holding a document containing information about participants in the Embassy Protection Collective who had traveled to Venezuela. “They have all the info already about the Collective,” he noted. “On a piece of paper they had the names of everyone in the collective. And they asked if we were all traveling together.”

At 11:50 PM, after two hours of waiting and interrogation, Torrez said he was set free. But unlike his travel companions, he was told his bags had mysteriously not arrived.

The CBP has not responded to an email from The Grayzone seeking a comment on the detention of Torrez.

“It’s funny how they criticize Maduro and [Nicaraguan President] Daniel [Ortega], and talk about dictatorship and harassment, saying that Daniel or Maduro are persecuting people all the time,” Torrez reflected. “But in reality, we’re the ones being harassed over here for just thinking differently than the government.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
https://thegrayzone.com

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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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