The Constitution Protects Us from Them
by Jacob G. Hornberger

The Framers understood the most important point about the nature of government: It constitutes the biggest threat to the freedom and well-being of the citizenry. Unfortunately, it is a point that has been lost among many modern-day Americans, who have come to view government as their friend, protector, provider, and savior.

If the Framers had viewed government the way that many modern-day Americans do, why would it have been necessary to limit the powers of the president, the Congress, and the judiciary to those specifically enumerated in the Constitution? After all, the Framers could have used the Constitution to simply call the federal government into existence and then written, “The government shall have omnipotent power to do whatever U.S. officials deem is in the best interest of the nation and to take care of the citizenry.” Instead, they effectively wrote, “Here are the few powers the government shall be permitted to exercise; if a power is not enumerated, it cannot be exercised.”

Even the enumerated-powers concept, however, did not satisfy our American ancestors. Convinced that federal officials would not remain constrained by the Constitution’s enumeration of powers, they demanded that amendments be enacted that expressly prohibited U.S. officials from infringing on the people’s fundamental and inherent rights, such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, peaceful assembly, and gun ownership.

Why did they want such express prohibitions on infringing people’s rights? Because they knew that the federal government would inevitably attract totalitarian-minded people who would do whatever they could to suppress such rights.

Our ancestors also demanded amendments that expressly guaranteed the exercise of such vitally important procedural rights as due process of law, trial by jury, right to counsel, right to confront witnesses, the right to a speedy trial, and protection against cruel and unusual punishments. They were convinced that in the absence of such express guarantees, U.S. officials would arbitrarily arrest, torture, indefinitely incarcerate, and otherwise punish innocent people, especially those who criticized government wrongdoing.

In other words, the reason that our American ancestors feared the federal government is that they knew that in the absence of constitutional limitations on federal power, U.S. officials would do to Americans precisely what they are doing in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and other places around the world where federal officials operate free of the constraints of the Constitution. That’s why our ancestors came up with limited, enumerated powers in the Constitution and express guarantees of fundamental rights in the Bill of Rights.

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Sealed Borders Work Both Ways
by Jacob G. Hornberger

Apparently not having enough to do to keep illegal immigrants from entering the country, U.S. officials are now also spending their time looking for illegal immigrants leaving the country. According to an article entitled “Border Busts Coming and Going in the Los Angeles Times, federal customs and immigration officials are setting up random checkpoints 500 yards from the Mexican border to search vehicles leaving the United States for illegal immigrants, drugs, and other contraband. People who cannot produce their papers are taken into custody and then turned over to the Border Patrol, which then deports them a few hours later.

Apparently the idea is to send a message to illegal immigrants that the U.S. government is serious about cracking down on illegal immigration. (The message being sent to drug dealers, apparently, is: Don’t even think of removing illicit drugs from the United States.)

Pardon me for asking a discomforting question, but isn’t it likely that, like other government interventions, this measure will have an unintended consequence that is opposite to what government officials want? Once illegal immigrants realize that there is a strong likelihood of being caught returning home, wouldn’t that encourage them to remain permanently in the United States rather than return home after making some money? And wouldn’t that, in turn, induce them to smuggle their wife and children into the United States? And isn’t that the exact opposite of what U.S. officials wish to accomplish with their immigration-enforcement measures?

The U.S. checkpoints for people leaving the country should also remind Americans of something that Germans and Koreans learned long ago: a government that is sufficiently powerful to keep people out is sufficient powerful to keep people in. In a national emergency, people soon discover that enforcement measures that were previously applied to people trying to illegally enter a country can be quickly converted to apply to citizens trying to quickly get themselves, their families, and their capital out of the country. Sealed borders can seal people in as effectively as they seal people out.

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Cuba’s Socialism Has Lessons for Americans
by Jacob G. Hornberger

Americans ought to pay attention to what Cuban President Raul Castro is doing in Cuba because he is providing them with excellent insights into realities about America’s economic system.

According to the New York Times, Castro has recently decreed that various modern consumer items, such as computers and cell phones, should be available for purchase to the Cuban people. He has also lifted a ban on Cubans’ use of tourist hotels and is letting farmers farm unused land at a profit. On the horizon is the possibility that Cubans will be permitted to buy and sell their own cars and homes.

On reading these things, some Americans might be tempted to think that this means greater freedom for the Cuban people.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The reason lies in the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. As Jefferson pointed out, man has been endowed by God and nature with certain fundamental and inherent rights. As such, these rights not only don’t come from government, they preexist government. In fact, the only reason that people need government is to protect the free exercise of such rights.

Among these fundamental and inherent rights are life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

Unfortunately, however, Americans have come to view the concept of liberty in political, intellectual, and religious terms, by and large forgetting (or never learning) the importance of economic liberty (as well as civil liberty). That is, as long as they have the right the right to vote, freedom of speech, and the right to make their own choices on religion, Americans view themselves as a free people living in a free country.

In fact, when it comes to the concept of economic liberty, the best way to describe the plight of the American people is with the words of Johann Goethe: None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

Consider, for example, such government programs as income taxation, welfare, Social Security, public (i.e., government) schooling, Medicare and Medicaid, and farm subsidies. If asked, the average American would say, “All these programs are the backbone of America’s free enterprise system.”

Now, examine this excerpt from the New York Times article about what Raul Castro is doing in Cuba: “For now, his government seems willing to accept those disparities, tolerating the notion of class differences while continuing to cling to a Cuban vision of socialism that includes food subsidies, free education and health care for all, Mr. Castro’s backers in the government say.”

Now, that is reality: Cuba has a socialist economic system. Everyone acknowledges that. But what does that mean? As the article points out, it means “food subsidies, free education, and health care for all.” And it also means government welfare and income taxation.

In other words, the same programs that Americans believe are the backbone of a free-enterprise system.

Despite the fact that Cubans and Americans have the same types of government programs, Americans continue to cling to the notion that they have a free-enterprise system while Cuba has a socialist system. One reason for this psychological phenomenon is that Americans equate wealth and higher standards of living with “capitalism” and poverty and lower standards of living with “socialism.” Another reason is that most Americans have been deeply indoctrinated by government officials for 12 years in public schools into believing that America has a free-enterprise or capitalist system.

But the truth and the reality are that the only real difference between the Cuban and American economic systems is of degree, not of principle. What Fidel Castro did is take socialism to its logical conclusion, while U.S. officials have applied their socialist principles less harshly than Castro has.

For example, the American income tax/capital-gains tax, inheritance-tax/welfare-state way of life is based on equalizing wealth among the citizenry. The idea is that government takes money from the rich (and the middle class) and redistributes it to the poor, thereby helping to reduce large disparities of wealth.

Isn’t that precisely what Fidel Castro did when he took charge in Cuba? He confiscated all the businesses and the big mansions, all for the benefit of the poor. He equalized wealth in Cuba. Never mind that he did so by making most everyone equally poor. What mattered was that most people were now “equal.”

Raul Castro’s changes in Cuba might mean more consumer goods for the Cuban people but they don’t mean more freedom for them. Since economic liberty is a fundamental and inherent right, its exercise doesn’t depend on government permission. When government officials are letting people be “free,” freedom is absent in that society.

By the way, our American ancestors understood that economic liberty was as important as religious liberty, intellectual liberty, and political liberty. That’s why they chose a way of life without such socialist programs as income taxation, Social Security, welfare, Medicare and Medicaid, public schooling, and farm subsidies.

By studying Cuba’s economic system and the changes that are now taking place there, Americans stand a better chance of breaking through to the reality of America’s economic system and leading the world to the restoration of economic liberty.

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Thieves and Welfare Staters
by Jacob G. Hornberger

Last February a federal court in Richmond sentenced a Roman Catholic priest, Rodney L. Rodis, to five years in prison for wire fraud and money laundering arising out of his embezzlement of hundreds of thousands of dollars from church coffers. The state of Virginia has now indicted him for the actual theft of the monies.

While the evidence showed that Rodis had used the money to support a secret wife and three children (Catholic priests are not allowed to marry) and to purchase real estate in his native Philippines, an interesting aspect of the case was the plea that his wife made on his behalf.

According to the New York Times, Rodis’s wife “offered some insight into what became of the embezzled money. In asking for mercy for her husband, Mrs. Rodis wrote that he provided for his parents and that he ‘had also been a surrogate parent to his nieces and nephews. He has sponsored their education through college.’ Funds were used, too, to pay for surgery for a niece who has cancer.”

What if the evidence had conclusively established that Rodis had used all the money to pay for other people’s healthcare costs and educational expenses and that he had not used the money to benefit himself personally? Would that have made a difference? Would that have obviated a criminal indictment and punishment?

Not very likely. Even if Rodis had used the money to help others, most people would say that such altruistic conduct would not legally or morally justify what he had done. The money belonged not to him but to the church. He had no right, either morally or legally, to take the church’s money, even if he was using it to help other people with necessary healthcare and educational expenses. Rodis certainly had the right to ask the church to help his family members, but the church, as the owner of the money, had the right to say either yes or no. Stealing is stealing, no matter how the thief uses the money.

While most people can easily understand such a basic moral principle — that it is wrong to take what doesn’t belong to you even if you use the money for a good cause — they enter into a mental fog when it comes to the socialistic welfare state.

Under the principles of the welfare-state, democratically elected politicians vote to forcibly take money from people in order to give it to other people to help with such things as healthcare and education.

Ironically, people’s attitude toward their politicians is totally different from how they feel about thieves like Rodis. People honor and revere their politicians as well as those federal officials who take the money (e.g., IRS and Social Security Administration) and those who redistribute the money to the needy (e.g., Department of Health and Human Services, Social Security Administration, and Department of Education).

Such officials are viewed as noble, selfless people for helping others, despite the fact that, like Rodis, the officials have not used their own money to do good but instead money that has been forcibly taken from others.

The reason that people lose their moral bearings in this process is because they somehow have come to believe that because politicians are democratically elected, that serves as a moral justification for their adoption of a welfare state way of life.

Yet, if democratically elected politicians voted to force everyone to attend church on Sunday, everyone would immediately recognize that democracy has limits and that a person’s religious choices are not properly the subject of majority vote. They just have a difficult time applying that same principle to the choices each person makes — and has the right to make — with his own money.

Under standard welfare-state analysis, Rodis’s mistake was in taking the money directly from the church. What he should have instead done is lobby his congressman to tax people in other congressional districts in order to fund federal healthcare and educational grants for the people in Rodis’s district. That way, people today would be hailing Rodis’s benevolence and goodness rather than treating him as common thief. They would be forgetting that moral principles are immutable and, thus, apply equally to government officials and common thieves.

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Killing Enemies without Trial
by Jacob G. Hornberger

In an editorial published last Saturday, the Washington Post celebrated the killing of a man in Somalia who the Post said “deserved the label of ‘evildoer.’” The man was killed when a U.S. Navy ship fired Tomahawk missiles at a Somali home in which the man was apparently located. The Post said that the missile “killed a vicious militia leader and an al-Qaeda operative.”

The Post did point out that the U.S. operation had a “distinct downside”: Some 24 other people were also killed in the attack. Notwithstanding that unfortunate side effect, the Post said that the operation was “a victory for the Bush administration’s counterterrorism operations in Africa.”

I wish the Post had compared the U.S. operation against the terrorist in Somalia to a similar operation carried out against a communist in 1973 on the streets of Washington, D.C., by agents of the Augusto Pinochet regime. It would be interesting to know whether the Post would, in retrospect, celebrate that killing as well, as part of Pinochet’s counter-communism operations in the Americas during the Cold War.

The victim of the killing, Orlando Letelier, was a Chilean citizen who had served as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Interior Minister, and Defense Minister in the administration of Chilean president Salvador Allende, a socialist and communist politician whom the Chilean people had democratically elected as their president.

When Chilean Army General Pinochet ousted Allende in a military coup, a coup with which U.S. officials were not displeased, Letelier was among the first seized and arrested. After being severely tortured and incarcerated for eight months, he was ultimately released on the condition that he leave Chile immediately.

In 1975 Letelier moved to Washington to join the staff of the Institute for Policy Studies, an independent research institute. He also taught at American University.

While living in Washington, Letelier became a leading spokesman against the Pinochet regime, thereby sealing his fate as a communist enemy of the state operating abroad.

Since Chilean government officials lacked a Navy that could fire Tomahawk missiles, they decided to take out Letelier using a more conventional means — a regular bomb planted in his automobile. The killing was apparently part of Operation Condor, a program in which right-wing and military regimes in South America, working with the CIA, had embarked on a program of torture and assassination against left-wing “communist” opponents, who government officials considered at least as dangerous as “the terrorists” against whom the U.S. government is currently waging war.

Letelier’s killing was organized by a man named Michael Townley, who had been CIA’s liaison with intelligence agents in the South American governments. Townley retained the services of five Cuban anti-communist exiles in the United States to plant a bomb in Letelier’s car. The bomb blew up, killing Letelier along with his American assistant, Ronni Moffit, who was not alleged to be a communist.

Interestingly, the Justice Department treated the killing as a murder rather than a covert operation as part of Chile’s war on communism. Townley, along with the Cubans, were indicted. Townley confessed to the crime and was convicted in a Washington, D.C., court, but things didn’t turn out too bad for him. For organizing an operation that ended up killing two people, he served only three years and four months in prison before being released into the U.S. government’s “witness protection program” for implicating higher-ups in the Chilean government, including Pinochet himself. (Also, see: “My Case Against Pinochet” by Letelier’s son, Francisco Letelier.)

After Pinochet left office, his henchmen, Chilean Army Generals Manuel Contreras and Pedro Espinoza Bravo, were convicted of the Letelier murder in Chile. Contreras told the presiding judge in the case that Townley had been supported in the Letelier killing by the CIA.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government continues to withhold classified documents relating to the Letelier-Moffitt assassination on the grounds that they are associated with an ongoing investigation, 35 years after the murder. Apparently they’re referring to outstanding U.S. extradition requests for Contreras and Espinoza.

The rationale for the Letelier killing was that Chile, along with other right-wing military regimes and the CIA, were at war — the war on communism. Why should government officials, the thinking went, have to deal with indictments, lawyers, trials, and extradition against communists, who were arguably more dangerous and threatening than terrorists? Better to simply kill them (or torture them and then kill them). Yes, war is hell, and sometimes innocent people are killed in the process. But what better, more efficient way to rid a nation of its enemies in the war on communism than by simply assassinating them, either with missiles or bombs?

It’s a mindset with which U.S. officials, who recently killed those people in Somalia with their Tomahawk missiles as part of their war on terrorism, can surely sympathize.

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

CIA Lies and Stonewalling: The JFK Assassination
by Jacob G. Hornberger

In his new book Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA by Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post columnist, Morley delves into an interesting and revealing aspect of the John Kennedy assassination.

Morley points out that the CIA’s official story had long been that the CIA had been unaware of Lee Harvey Oswald’s trip to Mexico City in October 1963 until after the Kennedy assassination. It was during that trip that Oswald purportedly visited both the Soviet and Cuban embassies.

You’ll recall that initially unpublished portions of the Warren Report were not to be published for 75 years after the assassination. Morley points out that faced with criticisms of his movie JFK, which posited a CIA role in the killing, Stone had a telling response: If the CIA had nothing to hide, why was it still withholding files some 40 years after the assassination? Largely as a result of that pointed question, Congress passed the JFK Records Act of 1992, which ordered the release of all government records relating to the assassination.

Since Oswald visited Mexico City during Scott’s tenure as head of the CIA’s Mexico City office, Morley’s book delves into that aspect of the assassination. Morley’s examination of the documents that were released as a result of the 1992 JFK Records Act revealed that the CIA was fully aware of Oswald’s visit to Mexico City prior to the assassination.

In other words, CIA officials lied about this critical aspect of the assassination investigation and maintained the lie for some 40 years.

As Morley carefully points out, however, the lying doesn’t necessarily establish that the CIA was involved in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy but it certainly raises an important question: Why did CIA officials lie about this critically important aspect of the Kennedy investigation and why did they believe it necessary to maintain the lie for some 40 years after the assassination?

An interesting aside is that for years Morley has been attempting to secure CIA documents relating to the role that CIA agent George Joannides played in the Kennedy investigation. Despite the 1992 legislation, the CIA has steadfastly refused to comply with the law requiring the release of the Joannides files. Over the vehement objections of the CIA, Morley successfully secured a federal court order ordering the CIA to release its Joannides files.

Joannides’s role in the assassination investigation is intriguing. He was the CIA agent responsible for funding the radical anti-Castro group in New Orleans that Oswald, who was initially posing as an anti-Castro advocate, initially tried to infiltrate. Later, as a pro-Castro advocate, Oswald entered into a much-publicized altercation with the anti-Castro group.

The CIA kept Joannides’s relationship with the anti-Castro group secret from the Warren Commission.

When the Kennedy assassination was again investigated by the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations in the 1970s, the CIA called Joannides out of retirement to serve as a liaison between the CIA and the House Committee. While serving in that capacity, Joannides and the CIA steadfastly maintained the secrecy of his relationship with the anti-Castro group. In fact, Joannides actions remained secret until 2001 when an article published by Morley exposed them.

As U.S. federal Judge John Tunheim, who chaired the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s, put it, “[Joannides] was central to the time period, and central to the [JFK] story. There is no question we were misled on Joannides for a long time.”

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the CIA hasn’t changed its stripes at all. In an April 30, 2008, article entitled “CIA Still Stonewalls on JFK Mystery Man,” an article that provides an excellent summary of the Joannides matter, Morley points out:

“Flouting a federal court order, the CIA refused to make public long-secret records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. At a federal court hearing in Washington, CIA attorneys declined to provide any records related to the secret operations of a deceased undercover officer named George Joannides whose role in the JFK story has never been explained by the agency. A three-judge appellate court panel ruled in December that the agency had to search its files for records of Joannides’ secret operations in 1963, when he served undercover in Miami running ‘psychological warfare’ operations against the government of Fidel Castro. The court also ordered the CIA to explain why 17 reports on Joannides’ secret operations in 1962-1964 are missing from the National Archives.”

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The CIA and the Rot of the Empire
by Jacob G. Hornberger

I just finished reading a very interesting book entitled Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA by Jefferson Morley. The book is a biography of Winston Scott, the head of the CIA’s Mexico City office from 1959 to 1969. Morley is a former columnist for the Washington Post whose articles have also appeared in such publications as the New York Review of Books, Reader’s Digest, Slate, and Salon.

According to Morley, the CIA recruited several high-level officials in the Mexican government as agents or informants, including Mexican presidents and many of their subordinates. Scott provided a valuable service for his Mexican operatives: He helped them secretly wiretap and monitor telephone calls made by their political enemies.

In return, Mexican officials would look the other way as the CIA used Mexico as a base of operations to achieve regime change in Cuba entailing the ouster or assassination of Cuban president Fidel Castro.

Here, in a nutshell, is the essence — and the rot — of U.S. foreign policy: Make sure that “our” people are in public office in countries all around the world, either through bribery, influence, assassination, coups, military training, military aid, or foreign aid. Do favors for them. Give them money. Do whatever is necessary to ensure that such officials will respond positively when the U.S. Empire needs a favor.

Do you remember the scene in the movie The Godfather when Vito Corleone says to the undertaker who has requested and been granted a favor by Corleone? The godfather responds with words to the following effect: One of these days, I will ask you for a favor and I will expect you to grant it quickly and without question.

That’s the way that the U.S. Empire works. Empire officials don’t really care how a particular regime treats its own people. All that matters is that when the Empire calls on the regime for a favor, it can rely on it to be granted.

Once one realizes that this how U.S. foreign policy operates, it becomes easier to understand how U.S. officials could support such brutal dictators as the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, and Pervez Musharraf. It also becomes easier to understand why the empire strives to oust or assassinate rulers, even democratically elected ones, who refuse to become agents of the empire, such as Mossadegh in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala, Allende in Chile, Castro in Cuba, and Chavez in Venezuela.

Some Americans might ask: What’s wrong with the U.S. government trying to get its people into public office around the world?

Well, how about if we ask the question another way: What would be wrong with foreign intelligence agents putting U.S. presidents and other federal officials on their payroll and ousting or assassinating those U.S. officials who refused to do so? Obviously, Americans wouldn’t be too happy with that type of foreign interference with their political system. Why should foreign citizens be happy with U.S. interference in their systems?

Moreover, when the foreign regime that is in the pockets of the CIA or the Pentagon commits human-rights abuses against its own citizens, the anger among the victimized citizenry is inevitably directed not just to their own government but also against the United States, especially when the CIA or the Pentagon has furnished the training or the weaponry for the regime. A good example of this phenomenon was the Iranian Revolution in 1979, when angry Iranians took U.S. diplomats hostage in anger over the CIA’s 1953 coup in Iran and the U.S. government’s ardent support of the brutal regime of the Shah.

Oftentimes U.S. officials must remain silent in the face of human-rights abuses by regimes it supports for fear of antagonizing their secret government operatives, especially when such operatives have embarrassing secrets about the CIA that could be leaked to the press.

Morley provides a good example of this in his book. In 1968, Mexican government officials opened fire on student demonstrators in a Mexico City plaza, killing several of them. When CIA Chief Scott asked his Mexican operatives for an explanation, they gave him a load of lies and deceptions that falsely blamed the massacre on the students, which Scott dutifully reported to his superiors in Washington. A week after the student massacre, Scott sent a thank you note to Mexican President Echeverria for an electronic time-zone clock that the president had sent him as a gift. As Morley succinctly put it, “The puppet master had become a puppet.”

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.