This video is from the plenary session at the 2010 national animal rights conference in Washington, DC. I talk about the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, secretive political prisons called Communications Management Units, and how we must respond.

Thanks to Mark Hand of Press Action for posting the footage.

I was interviewed by Scott Horton recently about the government’s proposal to make Communications Management Units permanent.

We talked about the history of the experimental units, and what separates them from ADX-Florence, the Supermax. Most importantly, the Supermax was created for the most violent prisoners, who pose a physical threat, and the CMUs were created for political prisoners who pose an ideological threat.

The Bureau’s proposal makes clear that the CMUs are intended to keep political prisoners with “inspirational significance” from the public spotlight.

You can listen to the interview below, and on Antiwar Radio.

Will Potter, founder of the GreenIsTheNewRed blog, discusses the prison-within-a-prison Communications Management Units (CMUs) designed to silence non-violent activist prisoners, limited oversight and questionable legal authority for CMUs, the tendency of governments to criminalize dissent from the left and right and why the erosion of individual rights (even of prisoners) negatively effects the whole society.

Want to win a signed copy of Operation Bite Back by Dean Kuipers?

Here’s how:

1. Go read this post about a proposal to make secretive political prisons called Communications Management Units permanent.
2. Submit your comment against the unconstitutional and inhumane proposal (instructions are on that post, it’s easy).
3. Leave a comment letting me know you submitted a letter (even better, paste a copy of what you wrote, to inspire others to do the same).

   That’s it! I’ll randomly pick one comment (don’t worry, folks who already submitted one will be included) and send the author a signed copy of Operation Bite Back, which is the story of Rod Coronado.

   TAKE ACTION BY JUNE 2nd!

   And if there are enough comments submitted, I have some other stuff to give away as well!

Andy Stepanian is one of the SHAC 7 and a former prisoner at one of the secretive prison facilities called Communications Management Units. He has a powerful new article at the Huffington Post telling the story of his time there:

When it was hard for me to find vegan food in prison Abu-Sayyaf used to bring food to the bars at the front of my jail cell. He knew I was a strict vegan and that I abstained from the consumption of all animal products. He used to read all the ingredients on packages and even then double check with me if the food was something that would fit my diet. I am sure that in the government’s eyes they assume that Abu-Sayyaf wanted something from me in return, but in reality Abu-Sayyaf only wanted to make sure that I was safe, healthy, well fed, and taken care of.

Before Abu-Sayyaf was an inmate in a secretive US political prison called a “Communications Management Unit” Abu-Sayyaf was a computer programmer for a software company in Florida…

There are 70 other men in situations like Abu-Sayyaf’s split between the populace at the Marion CMU facility and a second CMU facility in Terre Haute, Indiana. These are 70 stories of doctors allegedly breaching economic sanctions to deliver penicillin and insulin to children in need, or anti-war tax protestors, not stories of car bombers, hijackers, or the incidents that most of us have come to identify as terror-related. These are 70 stories that our government is ashamed of, and hopes to keep tucked away within these restrictive, secretive, purely political prisons, out of the reach of the media, out of the reach of visitors, away from the touch of their families and children, hampered by vetted mail, a lack of telephone communication, and — worst of all — severed from constitutionally protected rights of due process.

Please share this Huffington Post article on Facebook and Twitter, and then submit a comment against the government’s proposal to make these political prisons permanent. For background on the proposal: Government Acknowledges Secretive Prisons for “Domestic Terrorists,” Proposes Making Them Permanent.

The federal Bureau of Prisons has quietly submitted a proposal to make the secretive, political prisons called Communications Management Units permanent.

As part of that process, there is a required public comment period, where individuals and organizations can register their opposition. This is a process required by the Administrative Procedures Act, and it should have been followed three years ago when the first secretive facility opened; knowing that the plans would be met with fierce opposition, as previous proposals had been, the CMUs were opened secretly and illegally.

With multiple lawsuits filed in opposition to the CMUs, and with public exposure increasing, the government is attempting to follow the law in hindsight.

That’s why it’s so important to speak up, on record, against these unconstitutional facilities.

A few points to remember, from some of the previous coverage here at GreenIsTheNewRed:

• The CMUs violate basic due process rights. Inmates are transferred to these experimental facilities without notification, and without opportunity for appeal. Most of the prisoners there do not have histories of communications violations or disciplinary problems of any kind. All prisoners have the right to know why they are being singled out for harsher punishment, and the right to challenge that designation in court. Communications Management Units place too much unchecked power in the hands of government officials.
• CMUs are cruel and inhumane and violate basic human rights. The restrictions there meet or exceed those at the most extreme prisons in the country. “I haven’t been able to hug my husband, or even hold his hand, for two years,” said Jenny Synan, the spouse of environmental activist, Daniel McGowan, who is a CMU prisoner. “This proposed rule does not explain how prohibiting a husband from holding his wife’s hand or keeping a father from hugging his daughter, is necessary for prison security.”
• Political prisons have no place in a democracy. The Bureau of Prisons proposal makes clear that the CMUs are intended to keep political prisoners with “inspirational significance” from communicating with the communities and social movements of which they are part. These secretive prisons are for political cases the government would rather have out of the public spotlight. As we have seen throughout history, singling out prisoners because of their political beliefs sets a dangerous precedent and is antithetical to democratic values.

It’s easy to submit your comments online through Regulations.gov.

Submit your comments by June 2nd! And if you also paste them here, I’ll select one author at random to win a signed copy of Operation Bite Back!

This week we learned that the government has proposed making secretive prisons for “domestic terrorists,” which have been operating for 3 years on U.S. soil, permanent.

In this video Rachel Meeropol and Alexis Agathocleous, attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights, discuss the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Communications Management Units, or CMUs:

As a quick introduction, there are two Communications Management Units, or CMUs, in the country. They radically restrict prisoner communications with the outside world to levels that rival, or exceed, the most restrictive facilities in the country, including the “Supermax,” ADX-Florence. [For more information on CMUs and who is housed there: "Secretive U.S. Prison Units Used to House Muslim, Animal Rights and Environmental Activists."]

On April 6, the Bureau of Prisons submitted a proposed rule (Docket No. 1148-P), listed in the federal register. Under the Administrative Procedures Act, there is now a required public comment period for responses to this proposal.

The public notice comes after the Center for Constitutional Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union each filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the secretive facilities, where political prisoners have been transferred without notification, without explanation, and without opportunity for appeal. [See "5 Things You Should Know About America’s 'Little Guantanamo.'"]

FOLLOWING THE LAW IN HINDSIGHT

The submitted proposal is clearly a response to these lawsuits, and an acknowledgment that the Communications Management Units were opened secretly and illegally. Now government officials are trying to cover their tracks and follow the legal process in hindsight.

It is a positive development that the government is recognizing, and being forced to defend, prison facilities kept hidden from the public. There is the possibility of placing true checks and balances on the government’s power to create experimental units that are unparalleled in the federal prison system.

However, this step in the right direction is negated by the Bureau of Prisons’ proposal to actually make these secretive prisons even more inhumane.

INCREASING RESTRICTIONS

Daniel McGowan is housed at a Communications Management Unit

“I haven’t been able to hug my husband, or even hold his hand, for two years,” said Jenny Synan, the spouse of a CMU prisoner and a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “This proposed rule does not explain how prohibiting a husband from holding his wife’s hand or keeping a father from hugging his daughter, is necessary for prison security.”

The new proposal includes even more restrictions, including:

• “Written correspondence may be limited to three pieces of paper, double-sided, once per week to and from a single recipient;
• Telephone communication may be limited to a single completed call per calendar month for up to 15 minutes;
• and Visiting may be limited to one hour each calendar month.

MORE POWER, LESS OVERSIGHT

It should be noted that all federal prisoners have their communications monitored. And there are already policies in place for dangerous inmates who need additional monitoring.

The most prevalent of those policies are called Special Administrative Measures, or SAMs. SAMs are authorized by the attorney general based on information from the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s office.

This new proposal lowers the threshold for such special restrictions. According to the proposal, it allows for prison officials to act on “evidence which does not rise to the same degree of potential risk [emphasis added] to national security or risk of acts of violence or terrorism which would warrant the Attorney General’s intervention by issuance of a SAM.”

The government is arguing two competing claims simultaneously: (1) That Communications Management Units are needed because the inmates are heightened security risks, and (2) That traditional oversight is too cumbersome because these inmates are not dangerous enough.

The aim is, admittedly, to place more unchecked power in the hands of lower-ranking government officials.

POLITICAL PRISONS

If, according the Bureau of Prisons, these inmates “do not rise to the same degree of potential risk to national security,” who is housed here?

As I have discussed here before, inmates and guards at the CMUs call them “Little Guantanamo.” They have also been described as prisons for “second-tier” terrorists.

The proposal confirms this, saying: “One important category of inmates which might be designated to a CMU is inmates whose current offense(s) of conviction, or offense conduct, included association, communication, or involvement, related to international or domestic terrorism.”

It references past behavior as grounds for inmates being transferred there, but as I have reported, and as the recent lawsuits make clear, many of these inmates have no disciplinary history and no communications violations. Furthermore, these individuals were not the 9/11 hijackers or what most people think of as terrorists. They are prisoners like Daniel McGowan, who destroyed property as part of the Earth Liberation Front in the name of defending the environment.

The Bureau’s proposal makes clear that the CMUs are intended to keep these cases isolated, and to keep political prisoners with “inspirational significance” from communicating with the communities and social movements of which they are part.

These secretive prisons are for political cases the government would rather have out of the public spotlight.

Photo from Flickr's antonychammond under Creative Commons license.

As a quick introduction, there are two Communications Management Units, or CMUs , in the country. They radically restrict prisoner communications with the outside world to levels that rival, or exceed, the most restrictive facilities in the country. [For more information: "Secretive U.S. Prison Units Used to House Muslim, Animal Rights and Environmental Activists."]

Secretive, experimental prisons have no place in a healthy democracy, and their existence should concern every American:

• They were opened secretively in violation of the law. The CMUs were opened without public notification and the required comment period, in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, after similar programs were thwarted by civil rights groups. If the Obama administration feels these secretive prisons should exist, they should defend these policies in the open.
• They are political prisons. Most prisoners in CMUs have no significant disciplinary history, and many have no disciplinary history whatsoever. None of the defendants in the lawsuits have any previous violations of communications rules, yet they are being housed in a Communications Management Unit. They were transferred without notification. The only common thread to explain why these prisoners have been moved to the CMUs is that they are individuals the government would rather keep hidden: controversial cases, jailhouse lawyers, and prisoners such as Daniel McGowan who have remained outspoken about their political beliefs, despite being incarcerated.
• Inmates are transferred without opportunity for appeal, in clear violation of their due process rights. The director of the Bureau of Prisons has testified that there are 1,200 international and domestic terrorist prisoners. The few who are housed in CMUs, though, have been singled out and deprived of their right to challenge their designation. CMUs operate secretively with very little paper trail and no checks and balances.
• These experimental facilities are cruel and inhumane. The restrictions on prisoner communication rival or exceed the worst in the country. The extreme restrictions on inmate communications, including not allowing them to hug family members at the few visits they are allowed, go against a body of research and official government policy on prisoner treatment. Generally, the government encourages contact visits by family because they improve prisoner behavior, increase morale, and further rehabilitation. As an example of the long-lasting impact these policies will have on prisoners and their families, Yassin Aref (one of the plaintiffs) will not be able to hug his four-year-old child until she is 12.
• CMUs mark a continuation of the Guantanamo mindset by the Obama administration. Guantanamo reflected a fundamental contempt for the rule of law and basic human rights. The Obama administration has advocated closing Guantamo, and it must also close secretive facilities on U.S. soil that single out prisoners because of their religious beliefs and political ideology and deprive them of their due process rights to challenge their incarceration.

Regardless of how you feel about the individual prisoners or their beliefs, this is an issue that should concern everyone. These CMUs place far too much unchecked power in the hands of the government, and should make everyone wonder: Who is next? What else is planned?

As Rachel Meeropol, one of the attorneys for CCR, told me, this is one of the reasons the suit is so important: “Our goal is to get into the discovery process and figure out why these people were actually moved,” she said. “If we can get that out, it will hopefully blow the lid off the whole situation.”

This morning Andy Stepanian and I were on Democracy Now talking about secretive political prisons called Communications Management Units. Stepanian is believed to be the first inmate ever released from one of the secretive facilities; he is one of the SHAC 7, a group of animal rights activists convicted of “animal enterprise terrorism” for running a controversial, and effective, website targeting an animal testing lab called Huntingdon Life Sciences.

I was invited back on the program to talk about my reporting on CMUs, and about the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. [The previous program focused on Daniel McGowan's case and the Earth Liberation Front arrests of Operation Backfire.]

Thanks to Democracy Now for continuing to focus much-needed attention on these secretive prisons. The Obama administration needs to reverse the unconstitutional policies of the Bush administration, and provide accountability and transparency. Secretive political prisons have no place in a democracy.

The Huffington Post has published a letter from Daniel McGowan about his transfer to a Communication Management Unit without notice, without explanation, and without due process for appeal. [Here is some background on Communication Management Units, if you are unfamiliar.]

Here’s an excerpt from Daniel McGowan’s essay on the Huffington Post:

Many of the men here (both Muslim and non) are considered political prisoners in their respective movements and have been engaged in social justice, religious organizations, charities and humanitarian efforts. Another conception of the CMU is that it is a location designed to isolate us from our movements and to act as a deterrent for others from those movements (as in “step outside the line and you too will end up there”). The intended effect of long-term housing of this kind is a profound sense of dislocation and alienation. With your mail, email, phones, and visits monitored and no human touch allowed at the visits, it is difficult to feel a connection to “the streets.” There is historical evidence of the BoP utilizing political prisons — despite the fact that the Department of Justice refuses to acknowledge the concept of political prisoners in US prisons, choosing to call us “criminal” instead.

The Lexington High Security Unit (HSU) was one such example. Having opened its 16-bed facilities in 1988 and housing a number of female political prisoners, the HSU functioned as an isolation unit — underground, bathed in fluorescence, and limited interaction with staff. In the opinion of Dr. Richard Korn, speaking on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union, the unit’s goal was “…to reduce prisoners to a state of submission essential for their ideological conversion. That failing, the next objective is to reduce them as efficient, self-directing antagonists. That failing, the only alternative is to destroy them by making them destroy themselves.”