Disappeared News

I wrote about InfraGard last week—today it is the subject of a feature on Democracy Now! (10 p.m. channel 56 on Oahu, check schedule elsewhere).

Here are some snippets from the program on the organization:

AMY GOODMAN: More than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly in collaboration with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, this according to an exclusive report in The Progressive magazine. The business leaders form a group known as InfraGard that receives warnings of terrorist threats directly from the FBI before the public does. In return, they provide information to the government. According to one whistleblower, the FBI has given members of InfraGard permission to shoot to kill in the event of martial law.

. . .

MATT ROTHSCHILD: Yeah. It was formed in 1996 by the FBI. It’s an FBI program that works directly with businesses across the country. More than 350 of the nation’s 500 Fortune 500 companies are involved in it. And on one level, it’s like a corporate TIPS program. These companies, these representatives of these companies feed the FBI information about threats. They also can give the FBI information about disgruntled employees and have the FBI investigate them. So the pipeline goes that way.

In the last article, I mentioned the report that these corporate members of InfraGard have been granted the right to shoot to kill. Here is more on that:

AMY GOODMAN: But just to clarify, Matt Rothschild, who exactly is empowered to shoot to kill if martial law were declared? The business leaders themselves?

MATT ROTHSCHILD: The business leaders themselves were told, at least in this one meeting, that if there is martial law declared or if there’s a time of an emergency, that members of InfraGard would have permission to protect—you know, whether it’s the local utility or, you know, their computers or the financial sector, whatever aspect. Whatever aspect of the infrastructure they’re involved with, they’d have permission to shoot to kill, to use lethal force to protect their aspect of the infrastructure, and they wouldn’t be able to be prosecuted, they were told.

So not only can HECO charge high rates for electricity, but quite possibly, if they are InfraGard members, they could either report you to the FBI or maybe shoot you dead if you come to protest one day, if Bush declares martial law.

And don't say anything negative about our highly profitable banks, or you'll end up on the wrong list. I wonder who the InfraGard members are in Hawaii?

Finally, if you've clicked on their link above, too late, they've got your IP address.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Matt Rothschild, how does this story that you’ve just exposed fit into the many stories that you write about in You Have No Rights: Stories of America in an Age of Repression?

MATT ROTHSCHILD: Well, it’s just another piece, you know. It’s another piece of our Bill of Rights just going down the tubes. It’s another aspect of repression that the Bush administration has built up. It goes along with, you know, the illegal searches and seizures. It goes along with Guantanamo and torture. It’s kind of all of a piece, and once you put the pieces of the puzzle together, it’s really frightening what’s happening to our democracy here, Amy.