Remember back when I was asking all those questions about why an FBI task force had shown up on campus asking questions of a Venezuelan-American colleague?
Can anybody say ”Nigerian yellowcake”?
Yes, they’re wingnuttier than most over there at the Washington Times, but one begins to sense which way the wind is blowing…
Again, via email:
To the Pomona College Community:
This afternoon, I received a phone call from the Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles Field Office of the FBI, who apologized for any disruption caused on our campus by the visit of two members of the Joint Task Force on Terrorism to Professor Miguel Tinker Salas’s office on Wednesday. He assured me that no intimidation was intended and that he regretted that the timing and location of the interview request suggested otherwise.
A short time later, the FBI’s Los Angeles Office released the attached public statement. There has been a great deal of media interest in these events, and I believe that these latest developments may be covered by several news channels this evening or this weekend.
We are grateful to all of you who have helped bring about this apology by virtue of your communications with professional colleagues and professional associations across the country. I am very sorry that our colleague was subjected to this treatment, and I’m sure you join me in hoping that we will not have a repetition of this kind of incident in the future.
David Oxtoby
The attached public statement:
For Immediate Release
DATE: March 10, 2006
FBI STATEMENT REGARDING INFORMATIONAL INTERVIEW OF POMONA COLLEGE PROFESSOR
Agents of the FBI and its state, local and federal task force partners routinely conduct interviews in the course of daily activity. Being interviewed by FBI Agents or Task Force Officers should not suggest wrongdoing on the part of the interviewee. The FBI takes great pains to avoid publicity when interviews are conducted.
The FBI and its task force partners in state, local and federal agencies are mindful of the need to respect the circumstances that might surround the timing and location of an informational interview. When requested to participate in interviews, individuals are free to indicate a preference regarding these issues.
With regard to the interview of the professor, the purpose of the interview was to seek information. There was no intent on the part of the FBI, regarding the timing or location, to place the professor, his students or Pomona College in an uncomfortable situation.
I’m not quite sure that rises to the level of an apology, given the (mighty blatant, to my surprise) note of desire to avoid publicity, but I guess we take what we can get. Thanks to any of you whose outrage helped provoke a response, and remember, when requested to participate in interviews, you are free to indicate a preference regarding these issues.
Miguel’s story has now been picked up by the Pacific News Service.
Come on, LA Times; we’re waiting…
[Further UPDATE, 12.57 pm CST: My pal John Seery has a post about this outrage today at the Huffington Post.]
[UPDATE, 3.11.06, 11.45 am CST: The LA Times catches the story today...]
This came in just now, via email:
To the Pomona College community:
On Tuesday, March 7, Miguel Tinker Salas, Arango Professor of Latin American History and Chicano Studies, was visited in his Pearsons Hall office by two men from the Los Angeles County Sheriff/FBI Joint Task Force on Terrorism. To avoid rumors, I wanted the Pomona College community to be aware of the facts.
The agents asked Professor Tinker Salas a number of personal questions as well as questions about the Venezuelan government and the Venezuelan community in the U.S. During the meeting, they told him that he was not a subject of investigation. The tone and content of the questioning, however, troubled him deeply. He was also troubled by the fact that the agents reportedly questioned some of the students outside his office while waiting to see him.
Miguel, as all of you know, is a superb Wig Award winning teacher and a fine scholar on Latin American history, politics, and culture who is sometimes asked by the news media to comment on topics related to his research, including Venezuelan politics. The College supports him and his scholarly work without reservation.
I am extremely concerned about the chilling effect this kind of intrusive government interest could have on free scholarly and political discourse. I am also concerned about the negative message it sends to students who are considering the pursuit of important areas of international study, in which they may now feel exposed to unwarranted official scrutiny.
The College is currently consulting with legal advisors about the most effective way to register a strong official protest about this intrusion into our scholarly and educational activities, and we will take appropriate action as soon as their advice is received. We are also asking for their help in assuring that all members of the College community are fully informed about their rights and their options in such situations.
David Oxtoby
Here’s Miguel’s recounting of the event, which is circulating via email:
Estimado/as Colegas,
I write to inform you that yesterday during my office hours (Tuesday 2:30-4:30) I was visited by two agents of the LA County Sherrifs/FBI Joint Task Force on Terrorism (JTFT).
The arrived at about 2:40-2:45 pm sat out side my office while attended to a students, and then asked to see me.
They had with them a copy of my profile from the Pomona Web page, and other materials I could not see.
After identifying themselves, they proceeded to ask about my relation to Venezuela, the government, the community, my scholarship, my politics. They were especially interested in whether or not I had been approached by anyone in the Venezuelan government or embassy to speak up on Venezuelan related matters. In addition, they raised a whole host of other troubling questions, too long to summarize here.
After they departed, the three or four students who were outside my office informed me that these individuals had asked them about my background, my classes, what I taught, my politics and they even wrote down the cartoons that are on my door.
I consider this to be an attempt at intimidation and cast on matters of academic freedom.
I am planning a response, and I am open to your comments.
saludos
Miguel
I’m appalled, to say the least. And, in fact, too infuriated to write anything sensible right now. I’ll hope to be able to process this and comment more fully soon.
[UPDATE, 5.10 pm CST: While I’m not ready to comment at length, I can now at least articulate some of the questions spinning in my head:
-- Has Venezuela been added to the list of Most Distrusted Nations? Does Hugo Chávez insulting Dubya really rise to the level of terrorism?
-- If Venezuela is in fact the subject of official anti-terrorist scrutiny, how much of that scrutiny really has to do with terrorism? How much has to do with the threat of socialism? How much has to do with oil?
-- If somehow this concern about Venezuela is bound up in political economy, does that explain why it suddenly feels like the 1950s in here? To what extent is this “global war on terror” a hotted-up Cold War in disguise?
-- If we are back in the Cold War again, is this part of a growing trend of intellectual witch-hunts? I’ve been watching the maneuvers of David Horowitz and his ilk for some time and wondering if that’s where we were headed, but I guess I naively imagined it to be operating a little more covertly than this.
-- Miguel, thank goodness, is a full professor with a named chair, who has taught at Pomona for 13 years. What if someone less tenured, less well-known to the college community had been the subject of such a visit?
-- Why is the questioning of Miguel’s students the part of this that I’m the most infuriated by?
More to come, no doubt.]
[UPDATE, 11.46 pm CST: According to vemos, who got the word from one of Miguel’s grad students, two bits of bizarro information. First, Miguel gave a talk in DC last weekend on US policy toward Venezuela, which is what apparently triggered the interest. And second, the guys who questioned him may have been only affiliated with the Sheriff’s department, and not the FBI at all...]
From Katrenema, a short documentary on the state of New Orleans, over six months later. It’s devastating, partially due to the filmmaker’s sense that the images he can give us can’t fully convey the city’s desperation, but also partially because of the desperation he evidences in his continuing belief in a happy ending.
Sounds to me like last night we had the first SOTU put together entirely out of samples of previous recordings.
Or at least that’s how it reads. I wouldn’t know, because I didn’t take it in first-hand. Stuff’s like nails on a chalkboard to me. Can’t bear listening to it.
My doctoral institution, that private university in the public service, was at one point not too many years ago ahead of the pack in its recognition of its grad-student union. That recognition has of course now been withdrawn, and the university’s failure to negotiate with the union at all resulted in a decision by the union to go on strike back in early November.
The university’s administration, and particularly NYU President John Sexton, however, have retaliated against the grad students in a series of heavy-handed ways, including infiltrating the campus’s Blackboard installation in order to find out which faculty members were supporting the strike. Now Sexton has sent the students an ultimatum: any students who remain on strike as of Monday will be denied next semester’s assistantship, and any who return to strike next semester will be deprived of a full year’s funding.
A coalition of NYU faculty in support of the union has written a letter asking for the help of the academic community nationwide. The full text of the letter is below the fold, but let me just note this, here: Something big is definitely brewing when Andrew Ross and Alan Sokal are standing shoulder-to-shoulder.
So it turns out that it wasn’t really so much optimism that was in the air as schadenfreude, and lord knows the universe always manages to kick me in the ass whenever I run up close to doing anything unseemly like gloating.
Maybe it’s just that it’s Monday, and that I’m dreading this week. Maybe it’s just that waking up at 5.15 am to Steve Inskeep’s reminders about the nuclear option was somewhat suboptimal. But consider that optimism hereby retracted. I’m beginning preparations, instead, for kissing what remains of the Bill of Rights goodbye.
Somebody found this site the other day by googling “fitzpatrick investigation.” And oh, man, do I wish I’d had something to do with it. Patrick may be a Fitzgerald, but I’ll happily claim the brotherhood nonetheless.
