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Van Buren writes: “Here’s what passes for good news when it comes to a free press these days: two weeks ago, the Supreme Court refused without comment to hear a case involving New York Times reporter James Risen.”

James Risen, a reporter for The New York Times, spoke at an event at the University of California, Berkeley, in November. (photo: Alex Menendez/AP)

What We've Lost Since 9/11

By Peter Van Buren, TomDispatch

16 June 14



In the second, the principles of the Enlightenment and an armed rebellion were used to push back the king’s abuses. The result was a new country and a new constitution with a Bill of Rights expressly meant to check the government's power. Now, we are wading into the shallow waters of a third era, a time when that government is abandoning the basic ideas that saw our nation through centuries of challenges far more daunting than terrorism. Those ideas -- enshrined in the Bill of Rights -- are disarmingly concise. Think of them as the haiku of a genuine people's government.


The Powers of a Police State Denied





The Bill's preamble explained the matter this way: “ order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of [the government's] powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added.” Thomas Jefferson commented separately, "[A] bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth."



Still, for more than two centuries, the meaning of the Bill of Rights was generally expanded, though -- especially in wartime -- it sometimes temporarily contracted. Yet the basic principles that guided America were sustained despite civil war, world wars, depressions, and endless challenges. Then, one September morning, our Post-Constitutional era began amid falling towers and empty skies. What have we lost since? More than we imagine. A look at the Bill of Rights, amendment by amendment, tells the tale.

The First Amendment


The First Amendment was meant to make one thing indisputably clear: free speech was the basis for a government of the people. Without a free press, as well as the ability to openly gather, debate, protest, and criticize, how would the people be able to judge their government's adherence to the other rights? How could people vote knowledgeably if they didn’t know what was being done in their name by their government? An informed citizenry, Thomas Jefferson stated, was "a vital requisite for our survival as a free people."

That was how it was seen long ago. In Post-Constitutional America, however, the government strives to "control the message," to actively thwart efforts to maintain a citizenry informed about what’s done in its name, a concept that these days seems as quaint as Jefferson's powdered wig. There are far too many examples of the post-9/11 erosion of the First Amendment to list here. Let's just look at a few important ones that tell the tale of what we have lost since 9/11.

(Lack of) Freedom of Information

In 1966, an idea for keeping Americans better informed on the workings of their government was hatched: the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Strengthened in 1974, it began with the premise that, except for some obvious categories (like serious national security matters and personal information), the position of the government should be: everything it does is available to the public. Like the Bill of Rights, which made specific the limits of government, FOIA began with a presumption that it was the government’s duty to make information available -- and quickly -- to the people, unless a convincing case could be made otherwise. The default position of the FOIA switch was set to ON.





Sealed Lips and the Whistleblower








Self-Censorship and the Press



And the same has been true of the management of newspapers. In mid-2004, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau uncovered George W. Bush's illegal warrantless eavesdropping program, but the New York Times held the story for 15 months, until after Bush's reelection. Executives at the Times were told by administration officials that if they ran the story, they'd be helping terrorists. They accepted that. In 2006, the Los Angeles Times similarly gave in to the NSA and suppressed a story on government wiretaps of Americans.

Government Efforts to Stop Journalists

Reporters need sources. Increasingly, the government is classifying just about any document it produces -- 92 million documents in 2011 alone. Its intelligence agencies have even classified reports about the over-classification of documents.  As a result, journalistic sources are often pressed into discussing, at great personal risk, classified information. Forcing a reporter to reveal such sources discourages future whistleblowing.


According to Washington lawyer Abbe Lowell, who defended Stephen Kim, significant amounts of time have been spent by the Department of Justice in the search for a legal rationale for indicting journalists for their participation in exposing classified documents. A crucial test case is James Risen's 2006 book, State of War, which had an anonymously sourced chapter on a failed CIA operation to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program. When Risen, citing the First Amendment, refused to identify his source or testify in the trial of the former CIA officer accused of being that source, the government sought to imprison him. He responded that the “Obama administration... wants to use this case and others like it to intimidate reporters and whistleblowers. But I am appealing to the Supreme Court because it is too dangerous to allow the government to conduct national security policy completely in the dark.”



The Descent Into Post-Constitutionalism



Almost 13 years after the 9/11 attacks, it remains “wartime.” For the war on terror, the driver, excuse, and raison d'être for the tattering of the Bill of Rights, there is no end in sight. Recently retired NSA head Keith Alexander is typical of key figures in the national security state when he claims that despite, well, everything, the country is at greater risk today than ever before. These days, wartime is forever, which means that a government working ever more in secret has ever more latitude to decide which rights in which form applied in what manner are still inalienable.


Barack Obama, elected on a series of (false) promises to roll back the worst of the Bush-era crimes, while rejecting torture and closing America’s overseas “black sites,” still pushed the process forward in his own way. He expanded executive power, emphasized drone assassinations (including against American citizens), gave amnesty to torturers, increased government secrecy, targeted whistleblowers, and heightened surveillance. In other words, two successive administrations lied, performed legal acrobatics, and bullied their way toward a kind of absolute power that hasn’t been seen since the days of King George. That's the common narrative and, while not wrong, it is incomplete.

Missing Are the People






A note of caution regarding our comment sections:






Adapt and overcome.

Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News

+13 # Jingze 2014-06-16 10:21
While drawing on 9/11 is convenient, one should really go back to the day JFK was slaughtered followed by 1968, the year which put a heavy exclamation point on that terrible disaster. Yes, the country changed significantly on 11/22. It lost its heart and spirit. Now the people have no voice in their government, and the laughingly "sacred" constitution has become a shallow read.
+4 # Radscal 2014-06-16 12:23
And of course, what we remember and honor JFK for was fighting against the state apparatus that was largely created through the 1947 National Security Act.
+4 # Tazio 2014-06-16 13:11
Kennedy referred to the CIA as "that army behind my back".
+12 # wipster 2014-06-16 10:31
Even more so with a government that can set up a "Wag the Dog" false flag event like 9/11 and convince the American public that three steel framed buildings can collapse from office fires all planned by a bearded Saudi in a cave in Afghanistan and that cell phones worked great in planes back in 2001...

And if you question that based on the laws of basic physics you're not a "patriot."
+6 # Pikewich 2014-06-16 12:23
I agree with all you said but would suggest the "patriot" thing is not fair.

The general population has been indoctrinated to live in fear of everyone including their neighbors. They are very afraid of the implications of the explosive demolition of WTC's 1, 2 and 7. It would mean government complicity, and they can not handle that.

So my take on it is: "And if you question that based on the laws of basic physics you're are a coward, fool and tool of empire"
+4 # universlman 2014-06-16 11:07
Government transparency began to disappear long before the Presidential election of 2008. In that year, the volume of government documents officially classified as "secret" increased five-fold. This escalation has not slowed since. I assume that part of this volume includes all of our phone records.

The government by raising this protective shield, deliberately hides their activity from the type of embarrassing public outrage stirred-up by Manning and Snowden.

This is the type of action that the authors are warning us against. Opening this archive will be a lot harder than closing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. We should have better things to do.
+15 # ChrisCurrie 2014-06-16 11:26
The 5 Republican "Justices" of the US Supreme Court have done more to "trash" the US Constitution than anyone else. The word "corporation" cannot be found anywhere in the US Constitution, but they ruled that "corporations are people" as far as Constitutional protections are concerned (i.e. THEY LIED!). In nearly all of their decisions, they have sided with corporate interests at the expense of the Constitutional rights of individual US citizens, and they have clearly allowed our government to figuratively "thumb its nose" at US citizens' 4th Amendment rights. Now, if the Trans Pacific Partnership treaty and its Atlantic counterpart are passed, our constitutional form of government will (for most practical purposes) be replaced with world-wide oligarchy of super-rich corporate CEOs who have "no god but money!"
+5 # Radscal 2014-06-16 12:28
The evisceration of our Constitution and nullification of our Bill of Rights has been a thoroughly bi-partisan "success."

The rise of corporate power specifically, began when corporations were given "human rights" in the 1886 Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad case.
+2 # janie1893 2014-06-16 13:07
So what are you going to do about it?
+1 # 6thextinction 2014-06-16 18:44
This article is inaccurate about Americans. "A new poll from Quinnipiac University suggests that, despite widespread efforts by politicians to attack and demonize Ed Snowden, a growing percentage of the American population views him as a whistleblower. It's now up to 57% from what had been 55% in the last poll. The same poll also showed that a majority of people now think that the US government's anti-terrorism policies have "gone too far. It cracked 51%, up from 45% right after the first Snowden revelation, and way up from the 25% who felt that way back in 2010." These attitudes don't indicate that "Americans are willing to accept, perhaps even welcome out of fear, the death of the Bill of Rights, one amendment at a time" as Van Buren writes.
+1 # jcdav 2014-06-16 19:54
We can but will take massive numbers of people willing to unass and risk incarceration (or worse as the situation deteriorates) to get the MIC to realize it is outnumbered (but not out gunned)...
Time is fast approaching or all will be lost to the banana republic of Amerika.
0 # 2014-06-16 21:01
Yes but it was before 9/11 SCOTUS like the God to Moses. In USA SCOTUS Gorey details post-Elections ~ Handed you the BURNING BUSH & you let it be then, so must wear it now?
+2 # RMDC 2014-06-17 05:19
Thanks. this is good. It is clear that as our media and leaders said over and over, "9-11 changed everything." It was the coming out party for the American fascists. They no longer need to hide their intentions or goals -- although they do hide most of them. But there is enough for anyone who looks to see that the US is a police state run for the benefit of its big banks and corporations.

For at least 100 years, the US has been the most heavily propagandized nation on earth. People cannot very well analyze the social and political scene. The are presented with cartoon-like characters for political leaders -- Bush and Obama are the most cartoon-like of all. These leaders only are for TV. They do what they are told to by the CIA.
+1 # Carroll R. 2014-06-18 00:02
The real people who should be tried under the Espionage Act is the government for unconstitutiona l acts of spying on it's citizens and data basing all their private communication to be used against them in a court of law sometime in the unspecified future.
Just writing that sentence astounds me that this was passed by our congress who thought it was perfectly legitimate.
This country is indeed in a great deal of trouble. We are still so affected by the 19th century rulings of Supreme Court that handed over the Bill of Rights--- the rights we enjoy as living human beings, common to all human beings, to railroad contracts, man made constructs that exist only for the purpose of making money for the few, because the court did not want to acknowledge that the Bill of Rights now belonged to the freed slaves. Thus, instead of a body of law built on the 13th, 14th, 15th amendments applied to human beings as is demanded by the constitution (& 9th amendment, one of the powerful amendments of individual rights in the constitution) we have the gobble-di-gook of 19th century law that institutionaliz ed bigotry,, ushered in JimCrow and gave our unalienable rights to railroad contracts. The irony being that they had and have no right to do that, our rights being, to put it in today's speak, non negotiable. So, as I, say, who really needs to be prosecuted under espionage act.
