Journalist Put On FBI Terrorist Watch List Starts Class Action Case; and Stevens Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice by Bruce Levine

Journalist Put On FBI Terrorist Watch List Starts Class Action Case

Philadelphia-based journalist Dave Lindorff learned in spring 2019 that he was on the FBIs Terrorist Watch List, used to require special searches of international fliers from and to the US. The list is readily accessible on computer to all domestic law enforcement agencies and most corporate security departments. Lindorff is about to bring a case against the US government over the list on First Amendment grounds.

Attorney Baruch Weiss, a partner at the major DC law firm, Arnold & Porter, is handling the case on a pro bono basis. Weiss was previously a deputy lead counsel to the Homeland Security Department shortly after it was created in the Bush/Cheney administration. He wants to add to the case any other plaintiffs who have First Amendment grounds for challenging their suspected inclusion on the list before filing the case in federal district court in Philadelphia later this spring, so that it will more likely have an impactful decision if the court finds the list to be unconstitutional.

Examples of First Amendment issues would be a journalist who has written stories that challenge one or another US government agency. If that was followed by a sudden inability to obtain a boarding pass online the day before the flight or being called to the gate on a return flight to the US to undergo a special inspection of person and carry-on luggage and electronics by special security personnel as happened twice to Lindorff twice. In addition to journalists, a First Amendment issue might involve being active in a human-rights or antiwar or other anti-establishment protest or advocacy organization and finding it suddenly difficult to obtain early boarding passes or being subjected to lengthy special inspections before being allowed to board a plane.

Joining us today to discuss his case is Dave Lindorff. He is a contributor to The Nation, and writes for Salon, London Review of Books, and Counterpunch. He is founder ofThisCantBeHappening.net. Author of four books, Dave was a 1990s Hong Kong/China correspondent for Business Week.

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Stevens Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice by Bruce Levine

The 1861 to 1865 Civil War and the reconstruction period which followed it is widely considered to be the second American revolution. The slave-owning planter class in the south was defeated, at least for a while. Slave labor was abolished, but came back in other forms after reconstruction was crushed by 1877.

The promise of the declaration of independence that all men are equal before the law was fulfilled, at least for a while. Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens was the foremost political leader in the struggle, even more than Abraham Lincoln. Stevens helped to bring about the abolition of slavery and was a leader in the effort during Reconstruct to make the United States a biracial democracy This wise and eloquent revolutionary has been vilified and rendered obscure during most of the years since he died 153 years ago.

The distinguished historian Bruce Levine in his just published biography of Stevens Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice has secured a place for him alongside his contemporary John Brown in the pantheon of American revolutionary figures.

Guest – Dave Lindorff. He is a contributor to The Nation, and writes for Salon, London Review of Books, and Counterpunch. Bruce Levine, emeritus professor of history at the University Illinois and the author of four previous books on the Civil War era.

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