Aug 29 2007
Former Army Arabic Translator Recounts Work Spying on Americans
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Interview with Adrienne Kinne,
member of Iraq Veterans Against the War,
conducted by Scott Harris
Editor’s note: This Q&A is a special interview with Adrienne Kinne, conducted after their workshop at the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta.
ADRIENNE KINNE: I was in the U.S. Army and Army Reserves from 1994-2004 as an Arab linguist in military intelligence. I served stateside in that capacity.
BETWEEN THE LINES: What triggered your interest in IVAW and actually to join them?
ADRIENNE KINNE: Actually, I was mobilized in the Reserves after 9/11 almost immediately. And, working as an Arabic linguist in military intelligence, I saw kind of behind the scenes that the intelligence really was not there. I mean that the sources of intelligence were from groups that had interests in getting Saddam Hussein out of Iraq and that they were funded by our country. And I personally couldn’t understand why we were giving any credence to any of the intelligence out there. And I didn’t support the invasion of Iraq, but I really didn’t know how to do anything about it. So I stayed in the military until the Stop Loss was over and I was able to get out, and still I didn’t know really what to do or how to make my voice heard or how to speak out against the war.
And then I really put a lot of my effort into the elections. And I did a lot of grassroots movements, trying to get the vote out in 2006. I was in Virginia and I was really getting out there heavy for Jim Webb and I really thought that when he was elected, that would make a difference. That night, I just remember being so happy when the power just tipped in this country, and then the escalation was announced shortly thereafter. I totally had no idea how this could be happening still. So, I got on a bus –- I was in Vermont at that point in time — I got on a bus with a bunch of Vermonters down to go to the protest rally in D.C. in January and I made a beeline, I wore my BDU (Battle Dress Uniform) jacket, never done that outside of uniform, or wore my uniform outside, but made a beeline for the veterans’ area, and I saw the IVAW table set up there and signed up that day because I was just like, this has just gone on too much and we need people to speak up against the war.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Adrienne, I wanted to ask you a bit about your experience stateside, being an Arabic translator, and the kinds of things you mentioned, intelligence that didn’t hold water, you didn’t believe the war had been justified by some of the primary documents I imagine that you are referring to that you saw.
ADRIENNE KINNE: I was a voice interceptor in military intelligence, and so I listened to not only Arabic speakers, but people throughout the Middle East and throughout the entire region. And it was just so blatant to me that so much of the information that we were getting, that we were basing so much of our decisions on at a very low level, I just didn’t understand why we were giving the credence to it that we were.
For instance, we received one document that basically said where all the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were. And it was passed on by a group that the United States had been funding for years, who were trying to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
So, I mean, I went to my officer in charge and I told him, “Why are we giving all of this, why are we thinking this is factual? Why are we just saying because we received this information, that it is automatically the truth?” And he said that “your job is not to analyze, your job is to collect.” And anytime that I would speak out against anything, for instance, when we were given this waiver to listen to Americans, I was like, this is not according to our rules. We are not supposed to be listening to Americans.” And he said, “You obviously don’t care about your mission or your unit or your country or your fellow soldier serving overseas,” because I questioned what we were doing.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Could you say a little bit more about that? I heard you refer to that in the workshop session and it fascinated me hearing about spying on Americans. What were the circumstances and could you describe it a little bit more?
ADRIENNE KINNE: Well basically, I mean, we could listen to whatever communications were engaging there. And we knew that it was the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, and we continued to listen to them even after knowing that they were Americans and other nationals that we were not supposed to be listening to them, either, who were obviously not terrorists.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Now this was in Iraq, and it was phone conversations? Or what kind of conversations?
ADRIENNE KINNE: Yeah, they were conversations in Iraq, throughout the region, conversations with their family members in the United States. And we were basically just told to listen to them.
BETWEEN THE LINES: So was there any authorization for that at all?
ADRIENNE KINNE: They told us that we were given a waiver, because when we said that this is against our rules and military intelligence, there was a lot of blustering about - and trying to figure out what we could do and what we couldn’t do. Because of the war on terror, everyone was freaked out that we needed to do everything we could as soldiers to protect our country. And so, people were so willing because of that fear, and that terror to bend the rules, that when we were told we were given a waiver by the government — that is all I was ever told — that we were given a waiver and that we could do these things that we were not previously allowed to do.
BETWEEN THE LINES: What that time period was that for?
ADRIENNE KINNE: I was activated right after 9/11. We started working of December 2001. And that was probably somewhat after 9/11, but definitely in the build-up to the Iraq invasion.
BETWEEN THE LINES: So have you investigated that further? I mean, just in terms about what’s lawful, what’s legal and how that all played out? Do you know more about it now that you’ve left the service?
ADRIENNE KINNE: I wish. I wish I could figure out more about what happened. But I don’t obviously have any proof of anything that happened. I never imagined that I would speak out about anything that we did because I always believed that what we do is classified, and that we had to keep it classified for the nature of our national security. So I don’t have any proof of it, other than my memory.
And most of the things in military intelligence –- you cannot seek out that kind of information, it’s all classified. So I couldn’t, if I wanted to figure out more information about what happened then. So I basically have to rely on my memory and then try to find out as much as I can in the news from what was going on in that point in time and to kind of see what the connections were.
For instance, when the (news of) the NSA spying program broke in 2005, it took me a long while to even realize that we were part of that. That when I was in the military that was like the beginning of the NSA spying program. It’s just that they keep things so compartmentalized in military intelligence, and even in the military in general, that units are just small units of cohesion that are completely separated from other units. So I never really had a big picture about what military intelligence was doing. I knew what we were doing, and I had some understanding about the groups we were connected to, but I just never even imagined – it took me until I started getting involved with IVAW and really started thinking about it, to realize that everything is connected and that what we were doing was connected to the NSA spying program. And that it was all illegal far beyond anything that I comprehended at the time it was happening.
BETWEEN THE LINES: So, just to clarify, these were phone conversations of people, civilians operating in Iraq and they were Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders. Anything come to mind as far things that you heard that would have got your superiors agitated, interested, alarmed? I’m just trying to think of what — these guys are probably calling home to say hello to their kids or whatever.
ADRIENNE KINNE: So, a lot of that, we would listen to the conversations and they would say, just listen to them. If there’s anything of interest, report on that, but otherwise, you can just delete the cuts.
But one thing that really got them going, was that a worker, for I believe it was the Red Cross — he was speaking to a British worker in the Red Cross and they were having a conversation about what they were doing in the Red Cross in the Middle East and in Iraq. And the British worker said to the American, “be careful what you say, because the Americans are listening to you, they’re listening to our conversations.” And the American said, “Don’t worry about it, USSID 18 (United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18) protects me as an American. They are not allowed to collect against me.”
And USSID 18 is the military intelligence rule that says we cannot collect on Americans. So basically, when we heard him say, “USSID 18,” my group felt like he was betraying our secrets to the enemy. That’s how they reacted. It was just ridiculous that he was telling them — because he used that military intelligence language –- that he was betraying our secrets. They almost acted as if he was as bad as the terrorists. So they got incredibly agitated about that and shortly thereafter, is when we were told we were given a waiver and that we could listen to people like that.
BETWEEN THE LINES: You never saw a waiver — it was just say-so. That’s how it works in the military…
ADRIENNE KINNE: No, no. And I continued to question it afterwards. But, like I said, I was very much one of the only voices speaking out against things they were doing. And so I was just told, you know, to shut up, basically.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Just lastly, what are some of your big concerns about civil liberties, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, people’s right to privacy, having experienced what you did working in military intelligence?
ADRIENNE KINNE: I am greatly fearful of what has been happening with our country, and our Constitution. In Vermont, I’ve been very active with the impeachment movement. I firmly believe that we have to hold this administration accountable for the crimes they’ve committed against our Constitution. And as soldiers, we take an oath to defend the Constitution, not only against foreign enemies, but domestic enemies as well. And I believe that the actions of this administration, Bush and Cheney both have proven that they have been trying to subvert our Constitution. They have signing statements saying they are above the law. Nobody in this country is above the law including the president and vice president. And I think it’s imperative for our people and our Congress to demand that this administration be held accountable. Unless (that happens) a precedent can be set that a president and a vice president can get away with the things that this administration has gotten away with in the future.
I think that impeachment is very much tied to the war, because his lies – Bush’s lies and Cheney’s lies – they were linked to this war and they were against our Constitution. But impeachment also goes much beyond the Iraq war. It protects Americans and tries to restore the sanctity that we once had, and I think that is important. And it’s important even if Congress doesn’t go through with impeachment. It’s important for Americans to want to support our Constitution and defend America and our civil liberties, to speak out and say what they want and have our rights restored to us.
Related links:
“New NSA Whistleblower Speaks,” by David Swanson, July 2, 2007
Scott Harris is executive producer of Between The Lines, which can be heard on more than 40 radio stations and in RealAudio and MP3 on their website at http://www.btlonline.org. This special Between The Lines Q&A was compiled by Anna Manzo and Scott Harris.
When the remedies supposedly prescribed by the system (i.e., electing representatives to carry out your will) fail miserably due to the bankruptcy of said system, in the immediate sense the spinelessness and establishment allegiance of the “opposition party”—people are left with only more and more ‘extreme” forms of resistance. Who was it who said, “those who make peaceful change impossible will make revolution inevitable?”
The plutocratic criminals are far too attached to their privileges and far too arrogant, too much contempt for the “little peepul”–to correct themselves at this point. Draw your own conclusions.
The question now is: If the Democratic politicians are spineless, why are the American masses spineless, too? Is that a true statement?
The American masses are spineless because only a true participatory democracy can take place if they are informed. And that responsibility lies with the media, which largely shapes public opinion. Because corporate media is now owned by only a handful of large conglomerates with profitmaking as its goal, the “little peepul” don’t have easy access to issues that directly affect their economic livelihoods .
WHEN DID THEY REALLY HAVE ACCESS TO THE ISSUES THAT MATTER?
I don’t disagree with fellow posters on this thread but I must admit I am a bit puzzled by “betweenthelines” position in regard to the supposed “erosion” of media quality as a result of concentration, a fall from this mythical golden period in US journalism when the corporate media were living up to their social mandate.
That the American media are palpably in what we might call today a pathetic and degenerate state should be obvious to thoughtful observers. This reflects in my view the larger forces at work: as US capitalist democracy unravels due to its inexorable evolution (Bush is a symptom of the disease not its cause) into a tighter and ever more exploitative monopolistic web, so do the “relative” quality of its formal institutions, whether they be political or adjunct, such as the media. But I think that attributing the obscene degeneracy of the bourgeois media—and television in particular—to concentration is somewhat erroneous. I realize this is by now, mainly thanks to the work of Bagdikian and others, an article of faith on the liberal left. The usual mantra is “It’s the media concentration, stupid!” but, as I say, in order for me to believe that claim, that a few decades ago, when diversity of ownership was more widespread than now, everything was honky dory in Ed Murrow heaven, you’d have to show me a period when the American media was substantively better than today, and that, friends, is hard to do, no matter how many media icons you roll out to worship.
Hard if you take the historical record as the arbiter of truth and not the intramural chatter of the profession, which far too many critics seem to swallow without examining its self-serving mythologies. For at all times the performance of a mass media system must be measured and graded according to output, and this output has been consistently deplorable, for at least 150 years. Shall we review this for a moment? (I’m speaking here of mass media, not about the dissenters’ publications, which America has always had.) The question we must ask is: when confronted with severe crises of democracy and criminality in foreign policy, what did the press do?
Consider a few turning points in American history. Let’s take first the infamous “Palmer Raids” in the first quarter of the 20th century. In the wake of the birth of the Soviet Union and the disaster of the First World War, a great upsurge in worker agitation ensued which struck fear in the heart of many ruling classes around the world. The response of the US ruling class, always paranoid to a fault, was swift and unsurprising. As is customary, the target was the “radical movement” and its alleged threat “to the nation” (i.e., big propertied interests). In an article in Forum magazine in February 1920, aptly entitled “The Case Against the Reds,” Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer held forth in near-Apocalyptic terms:
Like a prairie fire the blaze of revolution was sweeping over every American institution of law and order…It was eating its way into the homes of the American workman, its sharp tongues of revolutionary heat were licking the altars of the churches, leaping into the belfry of the school bell, crawling into the sacred corners of American homes seeking to replace marriage vows with libertine laws, burning up the foundations of society.
Under Palmer’s direction, and the direct supervision of J.Edgar Hoover, a wave of spies, paid informers, and agent provocateurs were sent into unions, self-help organizations for the foreign born, and leftist groups of many stripes. A special Justice Department publicity bureau was commissioned to concoct and dissseminate stories around the country about a Moscow-directed plot to overthrow the government in Washington. As James Aronson has noted in his classic The Press and the Cold War, press releases were issued daily with inflammatory and highly tendentious headlines, such as, “US Attorney General Warns Nation Against Bolshevik Menace.” Inevitably, once the “radical enemy” had been properly softened through character assasination (a favorite trick), the government’s henchmen moved in to finish the job. On November 7, 1919, as a dress rehearsal, hundreds of foreign-born citizens were arrested throughout the country, many at meetings commemorating the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution. A few months later, on January 2, 1920, raids were carried out in 20 cities with the assistance of state and local police. More than 1,000 were arrested just in New York City, and 400 in Boston, where, as Aronson again notes, the prisoners were marched in chains through the streets. Similar scenes were recorded in many other cities, factories, and communities.
Now, this was a blatant unconstitutional abuse of power, for if freedom of speech and political assembly are worthless when you side with an “unpopular” viewpoint or vision, what is the meaning of protected freedom? We don’t need protection or guarantees when we’re safely ensconced in the bosom of the majority opinion, or fully compliant with the approved status quo. Anyone can loudly proclaim his love for apple pie and motherhood and expect zero retribution for such bravery in America. So, how did the media behave? This much more owner-diversified media? Did we see furious editorials and scrupulous coverage denouncing such government overreach?
Emblematic of the situation, on January 3, the day after the raids, The New York Times reported the roundup of “2,000 Reds” involved in a “a vast working plot to overthrow the government.” The headline read: “REDS PLOTTED COUNTRY-WIDE STRIKE–ARRESTS EXCEED 5,000–2,635 HELD.”
By the way, in case you never thought about it, “Reds” is an invidious term calculated to dehumanize radical activists.
On January 5, the American press’ “paper of record” let loose with an even more overt endorsement of the persecution:
If some or any of us, impatient for the swift confusion of the Reds, have ever questioned the alacrity, resolute will and fruitful, intelligent vigor of the Department of Justice in hunting down these enemies of the United States (sic) the questioners have now cause to approve and applaud…This raid is only the beginning…The Department’s further activities should be far-reaching and beneficial.
This is the “big property owners” speaking through one of their countless megaphones, approving of their other instrument of social control, the government itself. It’s class-informed “journalism” and nothing but, for what these dangerous “enemies of the United States” were agitating for was a shorter work day, higher wages, and the right of protest.
An editorial in Editor & Publisher, the newspaper industry trade journal, later summed up the situation rather neatly:
When Attorney General Palmer started his so-called “radical raids.” so many newspapers entered into the spirit of that infamous piece of witch-hunting that the reputation of the American press suffered heavily.”
So much for the press’ “superior” performance nine decades ago. Did anything really change since then? Let’s look at the “output”— again.
• Did the press stop Joe McCarthy in his tracks, which it could have easily done? No. He practically had to self-destruct by hubristic overreach before the puppeteers upstairs threw the switch to cancel his show (because he started to attack the Army). With a real quality press McCarthy and the whole anticommunist hysteria of the 1950s would not have happened.
• Did the press stood in the way of the “forgotten war,” our cynical imperial war in Korea? No. With a real quality press Korea would not have happened.
• Did the press stop our cynical and even more murderous imperial war in Vietnam? Did it expose its hypocrisy and immorality? No. With a real quality press Vietnam would not have happened. (Let’s recall this is the “golden years” of TV journalism, with names such as Murrow, Cronkite and similar press heroes emblazoned on the profession’s escutcheon.)
• In the same postwar period did the press expose—on its own— the shameless and criminal abuses of the great industrial monopolies, drugs, cars, food, etc? No. It took a crusading populist Senator (Estes Kefauver) to conduct hearings on these industries (quickly swept aside), and the work of an outsider to the media, Ralph Nader, to blow the whistle on the automotive cartel’s deliberate underperformance.
In more recent times, why didn’t this supposedly “liberal” media stop Ronald Reagan, a man whose political resume reeked with willful prostitution to the plutocracy? Let’s recall that it was the Reagan regime that inaugurated the radical right’s ascension to power, with a cast of necocon malefactors soon to find continued employment in the two Bushes’ administrations—and whose handiwork require no further comment on this blog.
The media did not perform its basic duties in the 1920s, nor in the 1950s, nor in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, or since the turn of the new century. Yet in earlier years there was far less media ownership concentration. So where is the significant correlation between quality and concentration? Where is this wonderful past, this period when the American press was behaving according to its own mythical best?
Matters of degree you may say, and I’m not saying that some differences, however small, may not have important consequences in a monster nation of this size and power. One or two degrees of difference may spell life or death for hundreds of thousands or even millions of humans, animals, and other species. True enough. (The same logic applies to differentiate between Democrats and Republicans, for those who like to study quantum particles.) But that’s a different discussion, related to quantitative aspects of social institutions, not qualitative aspects. Perhaps the lesson of this cursory review of the American media record is that many people continue to confuse “numerosity” with true diversity. But as is the case with fractals, you can split an entity into innumerable pieces, and, as long as those pieces carry the same “DNA”, they will stubbornly replicate the same marching values. We see this in media and we see this in any other industry or institution of the capitalist matrix we inhabit. In 1911 we split Standard Oil, thinking that size was the culprit—do we have real competition today? How do you think we are being treated by the oil companies? The breakup of AT&T was initiated in 1974 by the U.S. Department of Justice antitrust suit against the telephone monopoly. Under the terms of a settlement finalized on January 8, 1982, “Ma Bell” agreed to divest its local exchange service operating companies, in return for a chance to go into the computer business, AT&T Computer Systems. Effective January 1, 1984, AT&T’s local operations were split into seven independent Regional Holding Companies, also known as Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs), or “Baby Bells”. Did the public really get better service out of this, especially after de facto deregulation? Not really, because monopolies—even subparts of a huge monpoly are grotesquely large entities—do not really compete, except in superficial matters. True price and quality wars are the exception, not the rule.
It follows then that while concentration in traditional media may matter a little by raising still more the “barriers to entry” and stifling the appearance of alternative outlets, it is really secondary to the longstanding and deeply embedded political and social “DNA” of the American media, dominated by a capitalist worldview and an utterly bourgeois way of interpreting events that efectively prevents it from fulfilling its mandate.