Chris Hedges's Blog, page 266

The United States of Incarceration

This piece originally appeared in anti-war.com.

You’ve got to give it to the Defense Department – they’re assiduous planners. I know: I used to be one. So the latest news that the DOD is preparing its 40 remaining forever prisoners at the extralegal detention center of Guantanamo Bay for nursing home and hospice care, should come as little surprise. It still shocks the senses a bit, though, doesn’t it? The U.S. military, at the behest of the Bush-Cheney axis of secrecy, initially chose to detain post-9/11 “terror” suspects at Gitmo specifically, in order to keep the inmates “beyond the reach of usual US law.” How’s that for human rights and America’s self-proclaimed status as the world’s “beacon of freedom?”

To be honest, I actually appreciate the candor of the Trump administration and its soldiers-turned-prison-guards. It’s almost refreshing (if utterly disturbing). They’re essentially admitting what those us who follow the darkly absurd terror wars have long known – that these final prisoners are never being released. Ever. Nope, DOD is simply planning to keep these folks under lock and key forever. The reason why is more than a little unsettling: most were tortured into confessions that can’t be used in a jury trial, despite the habeas corpus ruling of the court in favor of the Guantanamo inmates. Leave it to the US government to simply refuse to try them or to let them go – consider it penal purgatory without due process.

By the way, almost no one cares. These are “bad guys,” right? Perhaps. Though many scores of earlier detainees were released without charge, so I’m skeptical of America’s record on the issue. Still, a great author – Dostoyevsky – once wrote, presciently, that “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” Well, if that’s true than God help the collective American soul.

These forever prisoners will die without a trial – the oldest is 71 years old – because the Justice Department is afraid to charge them (due to the torture), and the US Congress – in a rare bipartisan vote – blocked every one of President Obama’s attempts to transfer them to US supertax prisons. The uni-bomber, the 1993 World Trade Center mastermind, serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, and even Timothy McVeigh (of OKC Federal building bombing fame): all these and more were safely held in these maximum security facilities, but somehow we were led to believe that the Guantanamo detainees would pose an escape threat to society. It was all bunk, and the congressmen knew it. The vote was a political move to protect their own you-know-whats from angry, bigoted constituents. Don’t look for any courage on Capitol Hill, you’ll be searching indefinitely.

Reading about the DOD’s plan for geriatric detention without trial down at GITMO, I was initially angry and disgusted, plus a little embarrassed. Only then I realized something: locking foreigners up and throwing away the key makes perfect sense because, after all, we now live in the United States of Incarceration. That’s right: incarcerating folks – usually our own people – is one of the last things were still #1 at…USA, USA! America leads the world in its incarceration rate – higher than Russia and a few times higher than China. So, we’re in good company.

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We also still execute folks here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, even though nearly every Western, industrialized nation quit the barbaric practice long ago. In fact, in 2017, the US was the only country in the Americas to kill an inmate. As of the same year, more than two-thirds of the world’s countries had abolished the death penalty. Still, the US has plenty of compadres among other top state executioners like China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq! There’s a group to be proud of!

Getting back to America’s record mass incarceration, let’s remember that we don’t apply the practice equally. Indeed, blacks are incarcerated at five times the rate of whites in America, and black men are imprisoned at ten times the rate of the average Russian. Come on Mr. Putin, live up to your evildoer reputation and catch up!

Now as for locking up foreigners for long stretches, the US doesn’t have such a great track record here either. Let us not forget that Al Qaeda in Iraq, which later morphed into the Islamic State, was birthed in the American military’s detention facilities during the euphemistically titled Operation Iraqi Freedom. Oh, and the internationally acknowledged abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib – that also proved a boon for Al Qaeda recruiting. The US military: creating the people it is then obliged to kill, since 2001. Consider it an apt slogan for future recruiting.

Look, I’m prepared for the retorts: the folks still at Guantanamo – regardless of their advanced ages – are the “worst of the worst,” and can never be released. If so, I say, follow the law and try and convict them in a federal court of law. Wars are supposed to end, prisoners of war are supposed to be released at some point. Read the Geneva Conventions – that’s how it works.

Even Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombers – many with British blood on their hands – were released after the Good Friday Accords were signed (some even before). Even the Nazi prisoners of World War II – many of whom were served in southern restaurants in which their black American guards were disallowed – were released in the years immediately following the surrender. The Russians took a bit longer, and also worked many Nazi soldiers to death, but even they, after some ten years, released the survivors. The US tops the list here too: keeping some of the Guantanamo detainees for seventeen plus years now!

None of this is a question of whether you, or I, “like” the accused terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. It’s about two far more profound ideas: sober strategy, and the national soul. We already know, categorically, that prison abuse (Abu Ghraib) and the very existence of Gitmo bolsters Islamist extremist recruiting throughout the world. You see there’s a reason AQ and ISIS tend to dress up Western detainees in orange jumpsuits prior to their gruesome beheadings – its meant as a symbol of the uniforms donned by Guantanamo prisoners!

Mainly, though – and call me an idealist – but how we treat the “worst” of our prisoners reflects the spirit (or lack there of) of our very laws. Is this – perpetually locking up detainees without trial – who we really want to be? Certainly no, as far as I’m concerned – and I’ve fought the Taliban and AQI to bloody stalemates on the battlefield.

But, given the apathy of most citizens and how quickly this story will likely be erased from the news, I’d say the evidence demonstrates that yes, apparently, this is who Americans want to be…

Danny Sjursen is a retired US Army officer and regular contributor to Antiwar.com. His work has appeared in the LA Times, The Nation, Huff Post, The Hill, Salon, Truthdig, Tom Dispatch, among other publications. He served combat tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet.

Copyright 2019 Danny Sjursen

Mike Pence Confirms U.S. Support for Venezuelan Coup Effort

Vice President Mike Pence confirmed Tuesday that the Trump administration is firmly on the side of the coup plotters in Venezuela as violent clashes between the elected government and opposition forces led by Juan Guaido quickly escalated.

“To Juan Guaido, the National Assembly, and all the freedom-loving people of Venezuela who are taking to the streets today in Operacion Libertad—Estamos con ustedes! We are with you!” Pence tweeted. “America will stand with you until freedom and democracy are restored. Vayan con dios!”

To @jguaido, the National Assembly and all the freedom-loving people of Venezuela who are taking to the streets today in #operacionlibertad—Estamos con ustedes! We are with you! America will stand with you until freedom & democracy are restored. Vayan con dios! #FreeVenezuela

— Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) April 30, 2019

Pence’s affirmation of U.S. support for the ongoing coup attempt in Venezuela came just hours after Guaido—surrounded by heavily armed soldiers and armored vehicles—called for a military uprising against the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

The U.S. Vice President’s statement of support for the coup plot was echoed by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton.

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“The U.S. government fully supports the Venezuelan people in their quest for freedom and democracy,” Pompeo tweeted. “Democracy cannot be defeated.”

Today interim President Juan Guaido announced start of Operación Libertad. The U.S. Government fully supports the Venezuelan people in their quest for freedom and democracy. Democracy cannot be defeated. #EstamosUnidosVE

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) April 30, 2019

Bolton, who has repeatedly threatened the elected Venezuelan government in the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s attempted coup, urged members of the military to defect and join the side of the coup plotters.

“Venezuelans have made clear that the current path toward democracy is irreversible,” Bolton tweeted. “Venezuela’s military has a choice: embrace democracy, protect civilians and members of the democratically-elected National Assembly, or face more man-made suffering and isolation.”

Venezuelans have made clear that the current path toward democracy is irreversible. Venezuela’s military has a choice: embrace democracy, protect civilians and members of the democratically-elected National Assembly, or face more man-made suffering and isolation.

— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) April 30, 2019

Violence Rocks Venezuela as Guaido Urges Uprising

CARACAS, Venezuela—Opposition leader Juan Guaidó took a bold step to revive his movement to seize power in Venezuela, taking to the streets Tuesday to call for a military uprising that drew quick support from the Trump administration and fierce resistance from forces loyal to embattled socialist Nicolas Maduro.

The violent street battles that erupted in parts of Caracas were the most serious challenge yet to Maduro’s rule. Still, the rebellion, dubbed “Operation Freedom,” seemed to have garnered only limited military support.

In one dramatic incident during a chaotic day, several armored vehicles plowed into a group of anti-government demonstrators trying to storm the capital’s air base, hitting at least two protesters.

Meanwhile, U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said the Trump administration was waiting for three key officials, including Maduro’s defense minister and head of the supreme court, to act on what he said were private pledges to remove Maduro. He did not provide details.

The dramatic events began early Tuesday when Guaidó, flanked by a few dozen national guardsmen and some armored crowd-control vehicles, released the three-minute video shot near the Carlota air base.

In a surprise, Leopoldo Lopez, Guaido’s political mentor and the nation’s most-prominent opposition activist, stood alongside him. Detained in 2014 for leading a previous round of anti-government unrest, Lopez said he had been released from house arrest by security forces adhering to an order from Guaidó.

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“I want to tell the Venezuelan people: This is the moment to take to the streets and accompany these patriotic soldiers,” Lopez declared.

As the two opposition leaders coordinated actions from a highway overpass, troops loyal to Maduro fired tear gas from inside the adjacent air base.

A crowd that quickly swelled to a few thousand scurried for cover, reappearing later with Guaidó at a plaza a few blocks from the disturbances. A smaller group of masked youths stayed behind on the highway, lobbing rocks and Molotov cocktails toward the air base and setting a government bus on fire.

Amid the mayhem, several armored utility vehicles careened over a berm and drove at full speed into the crowd. Two demonstrators, lying on the ground with their heads and legs bloodied, were rushed away on a motorcycle as the vehicles sped away dodging fireballs thrown by the demonstrators.

“It’s now or never,” said one of the young rebellious soldiers, his face covered in the blue bandanna worn by the few dozen insurgent soldiers.

The head of a medical center near the site of the street battles said doctors were treating 50 people, about half of them with injuries suffered from rubber bullets. At least one person had been shot with live ammunition. Venezuelan human rights group Provea said a 24-year-old man was shot and killed during an anti-government protest in the city of La Victoria.

Later Tuesday, Lopez and his family sought refuge in the Chilean ambassador’s residence in Caracas, where another political ally has been holed up for over a year. There were also reports that 25 troops who had been with Guaidó fled to Brazil’s diplomatic mission.

Amid the confusion, Maduro tried to project an image of strength, saying he had spoken to several regional military commanders who reaffirmed their loyalty.

“Nerves of steel!” he said in a message posted on Twitter.

Flanked by top military commanders, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López condemned Guaido’s move as a “terrorist” act and “coup attempt” that was bound to fail like past uprisings.

“Those who try to take Miraflores with violence will be met with violence,” he said on national television, referring to the presidential palace where hundreds of government supporters, some of them brandishing firearms, had gathered in response to a call to defend Maduro.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said the “right-wing extremists” would not succeed in fracturing the armed forces, which have largely stood with the socialist leader throughout the months of turmoil.

“Since 2002, we’ve seen the same pattern,” Arreaza told The Associated Press. “They call for violence, a coup, and send people into the streets so that there are confrontations and deaths. And then from the blood they try to construct a narrative.”

Protesters erected barricades of debris at several downtown intersections about 10 blocks from the presidential palace, but police in riot gear moved in quickly to clear the roads. Most shops and businesses were closed and the streets of the capital unusually quiet, as people huddled at home to await the outcome of the day’s drama.

Guaidó said he called for the uprising to restore Venezuela’s constitutional order, broken when Maduro was sworn in earlier this year for a second term following elections boycotted by the opposition and considered illegitimate by dozens of countries.

He said that in the coming hours he would release a list of top commanders supporting the uprising. There were unconfirmed reports that Gen. Manuel Christopher Figuera, who heads the feared intelligence agency responsible for keeping Lopez in state custody, was among members of the security forces who had decided to flip.

“The armed forces have taken the right decision,” said Guaidó. “With the support of the Venezuelan people and the backing of our constitution they are on the right side of history.”

Anti-government demonstrators gathered in several other cities, although there were no reports that Guaidó’s supporters had taken control of any military installations.

As events unfolded, governments from around the world expressed support for Guaidó while reiterating calls to avoid violent confrontation.

Bolton declined to discuss possible actions — military or otherwise — but reiterated that “all options” are on the table as President Donald J. Trump monitors developments “minute by minute.”

He said he was waiting for key power brokers including Padrino, Supreme Court chief justice Maikel Moreno and head of the presidential guard to make good on their commitments to achieve the peaceful transfer of power to Guaidó.

“All agreed that Maduro had to go. They need to be able to act this afternoon, or this evening, to help bring other military forces to the side of the interim president,” Bolton said. “If this effort fails, (Venezuela) will sink into a dictatorship from which there are very few possible alternatives.”

Elsewhere, Spain’s socialist caretaker government urged restraint, while the governments of Cuba and Bolivia reiterated their support for Maduro.

___

Joshua Goodman in Cucuta, Colombia, contributed to this report.

What Have We Done to Deserve Meghan McCain?

I cannot bring myself to hate Meghan McCain. What would be the point? She is the natural endpoint of a giddily vacuous celebrity culture, a sort-of famous person who plays a sort-of famous person on TV. She frequently says stupid and hateful things, but they always seem uncalculated, and she is endlessly surprised to find that people disagree with her. (One suspects that the household staff never did, and now that she’s wandered off the compound and into public life, she can’t quite seem to grasp that not everyone is a family retainer.) Like most privileged mediocrities, her sense of moral conviction is perfectly befuddled.

McCain is one of the hosts of the beloved kitchen background noise generator, “The View,” where she has been known to pound the table and yell, “I’m John McCain’s daughter,” as though she were there for any other reason. John McCain, you may recall, was a famously corrupt senator who reinvented himself as a “maverick” by very occasionally bucking his party’s line and by very frequently flattering reporters. Upon his death last year, he was hailed as a moral hero for having personally disliked Donald Trump. Meghan McCain also personally dislikes Trump and often compares him unfavorably to “my father, John McCain.”

As is the case with all two dozen or so remaining “Never Trump” conservatives, Meghan’s natural audience is the national media. There is no other actual constituency for these beliefs. Anyone who rejects what Trump stands for must reject American conservativism as a whole, because he is its apotheosis: crude, atavistic, vengeful, unlettered, greedy, racist and mean. The “Never Trump” tendency just rejects the crudity, in principle ostensibly, but in reality simply for the practical reason that his transparency about the conservative political project constitutes a dangerous form of honesty.

Meghan McCain ostentatiously rejects the very prospect that “John McCain’s daughter” could be racist, although she is married to a man, Ben Domenech, whose also-ran conservative content farm literally aggregated stories into a “black crime” vertical. It’s hard to imagine that McCain ever actually read The Federalist—or much of anything, for that matter—so it’s probably reasonable to accept a plea of ignorance here. As is the norm in America, her ability to consider the existence of racism is limited to considerations of whether or not any particular individual is a racist. Generally, she assumes they are not. The very word is “the worst thing you can call anyone,” she contends, especially if that person happens to be a Republican.

McCain has internalized the popular conservative jujitsu of flipping accusations of racism by declaring that leftists are the real racists. This is how she stumbled tuchis-first into the manufactured Ilhan Omar controversy, turning a relatively calm discussion between several of her television co-hosts about the appropriate limits of criticizing Israel into a weepy soliloquy about how deeply felt the issue is to her, personal friend of Joe and Hadassah Lieberman, a Baptist woman who “probably verge[s] on being a Zionist as well.” It was plain that she very nearly said “Jewish.”

Every Jew knows at least one of these people, who think that because they went to your bar mitzvah and watched a lot of “Seinfeld,” they are practically Jewish themselves. McCain’s self-anointed ersatz Jewishness then squared itself when the Jewish satirical comic artist, Eli Valley, drew her as one of his classic grotesques: cartoon Meghan proclaiming her own self-anointed ersatz Jewishness! It was, McCain said, “one of the most anti-Semitic things I have ever seen.” Oy gevalt!

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But such is the inexorable logic of television “news” programming that once a person talks about a topic, he or she becomes a person who gets invited to speak on said topic. And so McCain found herself one of George Stephanopoulos’ roundtable panelists on “The Week” to discuss, among other things, rising anti-Semitism in the wake of another violent right-wing attack on Jewish worshippers, this time in Poway, Calif.

She immediately took the opportunity to say that if we are going to talk about anti-Semitism, we must also talk about Omar—the vile, racist implication being that a black Muslim woman who has offered some frankly milquetoast criticisms of Israel is a greater “threat” to Jews than right-wing nationalism. In a twist that is both disturbing and embarrassing, it now seems likely that the Poway shooter also committed arson at a mosque. The truth is that American Jews and Muslims are each other’s natural and necessary allies in the deadly conflict with white nationalism, but conservatives at least tolerate white nationalists in their coalition and hate Muslims, so hurt Jewish feelings are used as a cudgel against the latter while the former’s body count is conveniently ignored.

What qualifications did McCain have to talk to the nation—at least, the approximately 1% of the nation that watches Stephanopoulos on a Sunday—about anti-Semitism? None. But what qualifications did Chris Christie or some random Clinton campaign apparatchik have, either? Expertise is not the currency of television infotainment.

In this respect, McCain is one of the purer representatives of the medium in which she works. She has not traded on political notoriety and insider glad-handing to get herself into the green rooms. She is John McCain’s daughter, a genuine reality TV star and a pundit in precisely the sense that the buff alcoholics of “Vanderpump Rules” are waiters and bartenders. What a grim fate, not to have been born so much as cast.

This Isn’t the Election for Democrats to Play It Safe

As I watched the Democratic candidates for president on television during the recent CNN town hall forum, I thought that at least one of the women among them could make an excellent nominee. I also wondered whether this election cycle may be ripe for a strong campaign led by a woman.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar presented as forceful and knowledgeable as they fielded questions at the April 22 event. They were every bit as impressive as Sen. Bernie Sanders and Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who were also participating in the forum. Two other women, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, are in the running for the Democratic nomination as well. With former Vice President Joe Biden finally entering the race, that means 20 people from the Democratic camp are now competing to challenge President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential contest.

The winner will face a president who is damaged goods. The Mueller Report, too detailed to be forgotten or discredited, continues to chip away at Trump. Whether or not the report prompts an impeachment trial, it’s news, and neither Trump nor his team—including Fox News—can ignore it. (Actually, Trump is embracing the report. He insists that it vindicates him and keeps it at the top of the news every day.)

Some Democrats—including those who haven’t recovered from Trump’s victory—fear all of this will roll off of him and, protected by poll projections of around 35 to 40 percent support of his base, he will be re-elected. But even the most traumatized Democrats may still concede the Democratic nominee has at least a chance to beat him. That’s one reason why so many candidates are running for the party’s 2020 nomination.

It’s odd that the women among them aren’t being mentioned in the same breath as the men. That’s in part because Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in 2016, and her defeat has made the idea of a female nominee seem too improbable, to some, to merit discussion. This notion has become ingrained in the conventional wisdom consulted by the pundit- and Democratic Twitter-verses.

But improbable is a word to be avoided these days. Cornell University philosopher Kate Manne, author of “Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny,” made this point in an April 23 interview with Vox’s Ezra Klein. Manne said, “It’s depressing watching the four B’s—Biden, Bernie, Beto and Buttigieg—rise in the polls and generate enthusiasm beyond the substance that may be there while women trail behind them with no plausible explanation for why we see that striking pattern. It is always possible it’s just due to the female candidates being less exciting, but I have a hard time believing it in this race.”

She continued, “If we knew for sure … [if]  a candidate couldn’t beat Trump, that would be reason not to support them … [But] part of what makes someone unelectable is people give up on them in a way that would be premature rather than going to the mat for them.”

A Feb. 12, 2019 CNN study by political analyst Ron Brownstein, with useful graphics by Joyce Tseng, gauged favorably women’s influence among the Democratic electorate.

The study said that white women with college degrees, along with African American women representing all educational levels, could add up to two-fifths of all Democratic primary voters next year. The study also said that Democratic primary voters, including minorities, white-collar workers and women, continue to recoil from Trump.

“The solidifying dominance in the primary electorate of female voters could benefit the historic field of female contenders,” Brownstein said. “In particular, many strategists planning 2020 campaigns agree that college-educated white women and African American women are likely to emerge as the most influential constituencies in the contest.”

At this point, it’s smart to put the numbers aside, including the polls showing Biden and Sanders leading the push for the nomination. It’s too early for polling to mean much.

The quality of the candidates is what counts now. Do they come off as articulate and compelling in their speaking style? Do they have the intelligence to absorb the details of complex issues? Can they discuss them frankly in a way people will understand? Do they possess that intangible quality of charisma? Do they have the even more subtle quality of a fighting heart, the ability to withstand the buffeting of a presidential campaign and the presidency?

The female candidates meet these criteria every bit as much as do the male candidates. They vary on the details but fit into the Democrats’ typical moderate-to-liberal range, from the caution of Harris to the more militant liberalism of Warren.

It was Warren, rather any of the men, who offered one of the most electric moments of the campaign. At MSNBC’s April 24 “She the People” presidential forum, aimed at women of color, co-moderator Joy Reid stated, “A lot of women of color that say, after the experience of 2016, they don’t have the confidence in the electorate of this country to elect a female president. They want to vote one way, but their fear says that they may need to flee to the safety of a white male candidate.”

Warren responded, “How are we going to fight? Not just individually, but how are we going to fight together? Are we going to fight because we’re afraid?” The Massachusetts senator continued: “We got a room full of people here who weren’t given anything. We got a room full of people here who had to fight for what they believe in. We have a room full of people here who had to reach down deep, no matter how hard it was, no matter how scary it looked. They found what they needed to find and they brought it up and they took care of the people they loved.”

Then Warren related this to her own life, when her father was put out of work by a heart attack. She recalled a day when, as a child, she walked into her parents’ bedroom and saw her 50-year-old mother crying and preparing to face an unknown future. “She blew her nose, she put on her high heels and she walked to Sears and got a minimum wage job answering the phone,” Warren recounted. “The minimum wage job saved our home, and it saved our family.”

That’s what this presidential campaign is about—families facing economic disaster, only a paycheck or a serious illness away from poverty and homelessness. None of the men have expressed their stories with more compassion and understanding than Warren.

The other female candidates will have their moments as the campaign progresses. They deserve serious consideration. This is 2019—why not a female candidate in 2020? Why not a female president?

Impeach or Investigate? Democrats See No Reason to Choose.

WASHINGTON — Whatever happens next, don’t call it impeachment.

House Democrats have been careful not to rush to impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump in the aftermath of Robert Mueller’s report, despite calls to do so by high-profile lawmakers and 2020 presidential contenders. But as Congress resumes Monday, the Democratic oversight and investigations agenda is starting to look a lot like the groundwork that would be needed to launch an impeachment inquiry. At some point, it’s a political difference rather than a practical one.

“I don’t think there’s a magical moment at which proceedings become ‘really’ impeachment proceedings,” said Cornell Law School professor Josh Chafetz.

The Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hear testimony from Attorney General William Barr on Thursday, despite resistance from the administration. The Oversight Committee has reached an agreement with the White House for testimony this week on security clearances. The Intelligence Committee is probing Trump’s financial dealings. And the Ways & Means Committee is pursuing Trump’s tax returns.

“The House has such broad oversight powers that it really doesn’t matter whether they’re geared toward impeachment, toward legislating, toward overseeing the functioning of the executive branch, etc.,” Chafetz said. “At the end of the day, for the purposes of the powers available to the House, I don’t think it makes much of a difference whether they use the word ‘impeachment’ or not.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has insisted the door is neither open, nor closed, to impeachment. Instead, she says, Congress is taking a step-by-step approach in exerting its role as a check on the executive branch. It will lead wherever it leads, and the public can decide.

While Republicans and others in Washington are ready to move on from the report from special counsel Robert Mueller, Democrats in Congress are still fighting to see it. The Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., subpoenaed for a full and un-redacted copy of the 400-page report, and its underlying materials. He also wants Mueller to testify before the panel by May 21.

Pelosi suggests that Congress will have more to say on impeachment after lawmakers — and the American public — digests the findings of the two-year probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible obstruction by Trump.

“In every way he is unfit to be the president of the United States,” Pelosi said in an interview with The Associated Press earlier this month. “Does that make it — is that an impeachable offense? Well it depends on what we see in the report.”

Pelosi says she sets a “very high bar for impeachment because I think it’s very divisive in the country.”

In many ways, House Democrats are trying to have it both ways — pursuing the investigations that could serve as a prelude to impeachment proceedings without taking the politically fraught step of calling it impeachment.

The balancing act reflects recent polling that shows Americans are interested in getting more information, but also split. A poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research ahead of the report’s release this month showed that even with the Mueller probe complete, 53% said Congress should continue to investigate Trump’s ties with Russia, while 45% said Congress should not. A similar percentage, 53%, said Congress should take steps to impeach Trump if he is found to have obstructed justice, even if he did not have inappropriate contacts with Russia.

While high-profile Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and presidential contenders Elizabeth Warren and Beto O’Rouke, have called for the House to begin impeachment proceedings, others have not.

For many House Democrats, particularly newly-elected freshmen representing districts Trump won in 2018, putting their names to a floor vote to launch an impeachment inquiry would likely become politically fraught.

Sarah Binder, a professor of political science at George Washington University, said as long as those cross currents exist within the House Democratic caucus, “it’s in Pelosi’s interest to slow down the impeachment train, but hold the administration accountable for Trump’s first two year in office.”

At this stage, whether Congress is conducting oversight or holding impeachment proceedings, the tools are mostly the same — subpoenas, hearings, investigations.

But that could change, as Trump is refusing to comply with subpoenas for administration officials to testify and blocking Congress from obtaining more information.

Barr, who is set to appear Wednesday before Senate Judiciary Committee, where Republicans have the majority, has informed the House that he may not appear Thursday if Democrats insist on having committee staff from both sides question him after lawmakers do. Unbowed, Democrats scheduled a committee vote for Wednesday to allow the staff questions.

Pelosi, in a brief interview Monday, said Barr would be “obstructing Congress” if he decided not to testify. Witnesses, she said, can’t “tell the committee how to conduct its interviews.”

Those tensions set up a legal battle that will test the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches and could become a defining one for this Congress and this administration.

The outcome remains uncertain. It’s not at all clear that the House will ever fully broach the topic of impeachment, and such proceedings have been rare in Congress. The House has impeached just 19 people, mostly federal judges, and fewer than half ended up being convicted by the Senate, according the Congressional Research Service.

___

Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.

The Number of Giant Companies Paying $0 in Corporate Taxes Doubled In 2018

JPMorgan Chase’s attempt at Twitter humor failed Monday morning.

What may have seemed like a lighthearted (and since-deleted) joke about its followers’ excessive spending habits was met with a stream of replies pointing out that perhaps a bank that received $12 billion in bailout money after the financial crisis, whose CEO’s salary is $31 million, and that has a history of mortgage fraud, should refrain from publicly lecturing its customers on their spending habits for coffee and lunch.

The reaction to the tweet is reflective of a political climate in which many Americans are concerned about economic inequality and particularly whether corporations are paying their fair share in taxes. Amazon paid no federal taxes in 2018. Neither did Delta Air Lines, Chevron or General Motors. Meanwhile, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s net worth is $150 billion.

That’s a far cry from the $18,000-a-year salary of Colin Roberson of Akron, Ohio. Roberson, who cleans carpets for a living, compared his financial situation to Bezos’s, telling Stephanie Saul and Patricia Cohen of The New York Times that “[Bezos] could be taxed at 99.9 percent and still have millions left over. … I’d be homeless.”

The phenomenon of giant corporations getting tax breaks isn’t new. As Saul and Cohen report, “For decades, profitable companies have been able to avoid corporate taxes.” What has changed is the increase in companies able to do so. “The list of those paying zero roughly doubled last year,” Saul and Cohen continued, “as a result of provisions in President Trump’s 2017 tax bill that expanded corporate tax breaks and reduced the tax rate on corporate income.”

An April report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) reveals how 60 profitable Fortune 500 companies managed to avoid paying taxes. As the report explains:

In 2018, 60 of America’s biggest corporations zeroed out their federal income taxes on $79 billion in U.S. pretax income. Instead of paying $16.4 billion in taxes at the 21 percent statutory corporate tax rate, these companies enjoyed a net corporate tax rebate of $4.3 billion.

“It’s a topic,” Saul and Cohen write, “that several presidential candidates, led by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have hammered recently as they travel the campaign trail.”

During a Fox News Town Hall last week, Sanders told the crowd that “Amazon, Netflix and dozens of major corporations, as a result of Trump’s tax bill, pay nothing in federal taxes. … I think that’s a disgrace.” Under Warren’s tax plan, which would have companies pay a new 7% tax on every dollar in profits over $100, Amazon would have paid $698 million in corporate taxes in 2018.

Former Vice President Joe Biden appears to be playing both sides when it comes to raising corporate taxes and discussing economic inequality. Last week, in a speech to the Brookings Institution he said, “I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason we’re in trouble. The folks at the top aren’t bad guys.” This was a departure from a previous Brookings speech last year, when he spoke much more forcefully in favor of a more equitable tax code: “We have to deal with this tax code. … It’s wildly skewed toward taking care of those at the very top. It overwhelmingly favors investors over workers.”

While taxes are in general a more important issue for Republicans than Democrats, according to fall 2018 Gallup poll, when surveys ask specifically about raising taxes on corporations, “More Americans support raising the corporate tax rate than lowering it or leaving it unchanged,” as Saul and Cohen report.

Read the full ITEP report here.

Rod Rosenstein Submits Letter of Resignation to Trump

WASHINGTON — Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein submitted his resignation Monday, ending a two-year run defined by his appointment of a special counsel to investigate connections between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. His last day will be May 11.

Rosenstein’s departure had been expected following the confirmation of William Barr as attorney general. The White House nominated a replacement for the department’s No. 2 slot weeks ago.

In his resignation letter to Trump, Rosenstein paid tribute to Trump, even praising the president’s sense of humor, despite being the subject of some of Trump’s most biting jabs. Trump once retweeted an image that showed Rosenstein and other officials jailed for treason.

Rosenstein intended to leave around mid-March but stayed on for the completion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Mueller last month submitted his report to the Justice Department, and Rosenstein was part of a small group of department officials who reviewed the document and helped shape its public release. After Mueller didn’t reach a conclusion on whether Trump had obstructed the investigation, Barr and Rosenstein stepped in and determined the evidence wasn’t enough to support such an allegation.

Rosenstein appointed Mueller in May 2017 following the recusal of then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and oversaw much of his work. His exit leaves the department without the official most closely aligned with the probe as officials grapple with public and congressional scrutiny of the special counsel’s findings and the department’s handling of the report.

He not only supervised Mueller’s work for much of the last two years but also defended the investigation against attacks from congressional Republicans and Trump, who has blasted the probe as a “witch hunt.” In so doing, Rosenstein sometimes found himself at odds with Trump. He was nonetheless spared the brunt of anger directed at Sessions, whose recusal from the Russia investigation infuriated the president, leading to his forced resignation last November.

As deputy, Rosenstein was a central character in some of the most consequential, even chaotic, moments of the Trump administration. He wrote a memo criticizing James Comey that the White House used as justification for the firing of the FBI director, then a week later appointed Mueller to investigate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. That investigation swiftly grew to include whether the firing of Comey constituted obstruction of justice.

Integral to the start of the investigation, Rosenstein was also present for the very end, standing silently on stage behind Barr two weeks ago when the attorney general cleared the president of obstruction, praised the president’s cooperation with the investigation and maintained several times that there had been no collusion between the campaign and Russia.

In his resignation letter, Rosenstein said most deputies stay in their post for about 16 months; Rosenstein will have served about two years.

“I am grateful to you for the opportunity to serve; for the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations; and for the goals you set in your inaugural address: patriotism, unity, safety, education, and prosperity, because ‘a nation exists to serve its citizens,'” Rosenstein wrote.

The deputy attorney general position is a hugely significant job, responsible for overseeing the daily operations of the Justice Department and the work of United States attorneys across the country. Trump has nominated Deputy Transportation Secretary Jeffrey Rosen as Rosenstein’s replacement.

Though Rosenstein’s exit was orderly, his relationship with the president had waffled over time. His job status appeared perilous last September following news reports that he had discussed secretly recording Trump and invoking a constitutional amendment to remove him from office. He hung on for several more months and appeared to turn the page, at least publicly, after a private meeting with Trump aboard Air Force One.

Rosenstein appointed Mueller after Sessions, who ordinarily would have overseen the investigation, recused himself in March 2017 because of his close involvement in the Trump campaign. The appointment came one week after Trump fired Comey, an action Rosenstein laid the groundwork for by writing a memo that sharply criticized Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

The White House initially cited the memo as justification for the firing, but Trump has said he was thinking of “this Russia thing” when he fired Comey.

Over the next two years, with Sessions recused from the Russia investigation, Rosenstein set the boundaries of Mueller’s investigation, approved investigative steps and, in place of the rarely seen special counsel, twice announced criminal indictments from the Justice Department podium against Russians accused of election interference.

The investigation overshadowed the rest of Rosenstein’s work even as he joined Sessions in talking up the president’s agenda, including announcements on combating violent crime and opioid addiction.

Rosenstein endured in the job beyond Sessions, but there were moments when his position appeared in the balance.

Trump lamented to The New York Times in July 2017 that “there are very few Republicans in Baltimore,” a reference to Rosenstein’s prior job as the U.S. attorney in Maryland. Rosenstein was appointed to that position by Republican President George W. Bush and remained for the entire Obama administration.

That same summer, Trump tweeted: “I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt”

Trump lashed out the following April after the FBI raided the office of his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and months later retweeted the image that showed Rosenstein, Comey and other investigators behind bars.

In September, The New York Times reported that after Comey’s firing, Rosenstein and other top law enforcement officials had discussed secretly recording the president to expose chaos inside the White House and invoking the 25th Amendment, which allows the Cabinet to seek the removal of a president deemed unfit for office.

The Justice Department issued statements challenging the reporting, but former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe — who was in the room — has said he got the sense that Rosenstein was “counting votes” about which Cabinet members he could enlist in the effort.

Rosenstein arrived at the White House days after the reporting expecting to be fired, but he was instead allowed to stay on after private conversations with Trump’s then-chief of staff, John Kelly, and the president himself.

Is the U.S. Protecting Saudi Fugitives Accused of Serious Crimes?

This story was co-published with The Oregonian/OregonLive.

The government of Saudi Arabia has repeatedly helped Saudi citizens evade prosecutors and the police in the United States and flee back to their homeland after being accused of serious crimes here, current and former U.S. officials said.

The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies have been aware of the Saudi actions for at least a decade, officials said. But successive American administrations have avoided confronting the government in Riyadh out of concern that doing so might jeopardize U.S. interests, particularly Saudi cooperation in the fight against Islamist terrorism, current and former officials said.

Fleeing Justice

University students from Saudi Arabia studying in the U.S. and Canada have vanished while facing criminal charges. Authorities suspect the Saudi government is spiriting them out of the country.

“It’s not that the issue of Saudi fugitives from the U.S. wasn’t important,” said retired FBI agent Jeffrey Danik, who served as the agency’s assistant legal attache in Riyadh from 2010 to 2012. “It’s that the security relationship was so much more important. On counter-terrorism, on protecting the U.S. and its partners, on opposing Iran, the Saudis were invaluable allies.”

American officials said Saudi diplomats, intelligence officers and other operatives have assisted in the illegal flight of Saudi fugitives, most of them university students, after they were charged with crimes including rape and manslaughter. The Saudis have bailed the suspects out of jail, hired lawyers to defend them, arranged their travel home and covered their forfeited bonds, the officials said.

A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, Fahad Nazer, said that only “a small fraction” of Saudi students in the United States have gotten into legal trouble, and that Saudi officials have “strictly adhered to all U.S. laws” in helping them. “The notion that the Saudi government actively helps citizens evade justice after they have been implicated in legal wrongdoing in the U.S. is simply not true,” he said. He did not respond to questions about how a series of Saudi students had managed to return home while facing criminal charges in the United States.

The Trump administration has deflected calls for an accounting of the Saudi government’s role in the flight of fugitives, asserting that there is little the United States can do because it has no extradition treaty with the kingdom. This week, the State Department said for the first time that it has raised the issue with senior Saudi officials, but it would not specify when or how.

“The U.S. government takes this seriously,” said a State Department spokeswoman, who would only respond to ProPublica’s questions on condition of anonymity.

The repeated flight of Saudi students from U.S. justice was revealed in a series of recent articles in The Oregonian/OregonLive, with which ProPublica is now collaborating to report on the issue. Those articles have identified more than 20 cases since 1988 in which Saudis have fled from legal troubles — before and often after being charged with crimes — in the United States and Canada. The extent of the Saudi government’s role in helping such fugitives and the fact that U.S. national security agencies have long known of it have not previously been reported.

U.S. officials said the problem of Saudi students fleeing prosecution had increased as the Saudi student population in the United States has exploded, rising from fewer than 5,000 in 2005 to more than 80,000 a decade later, according to DHS figures. The Saudi government has sponsored most of those students under a $3 billion scholarship program created by the late King Abdullah.

The students are dispersed widely around the United States, attending schools from Oregon State University to Western Illinois University to Southern New Hampshire University. The program has brought a bounty of full-freight tuition payments to dozens of state and private institutions and introduced a new generation of Saudis to life outside the regimented confines of the kingdom.

A former senior national security official said DHS first focused on the issue of Saudis evading justice in 2008, when an intelligence unit tracking foreign students noted a pattern of Saudis disappearing back to their homeland after they had been charged with crimes in the United States.

DHS analysts identified several Saudi officials who had assisted in the repatriation efforts while working out of the Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission, a government agency that both supports and monitors Saudi students in the United States. At least some of the officials at the Cultural Mission appeared to be intelligence officers working undercover, the former senior official said.

Since then, DHS and other agencies have learned of more cases in which Saudi suspects have eluded American justice, apparently with their government’s help. But U.S. law enforcement agencies still have only a sketchy understanding of how some of the Saudi suspects escaped the United States and the role that Saudi operatives played, officials said.

Instances of misconduct by foreign diplomats are typically raised by State Department officials in meetings with foreign envoys in Washington and overseas. But none of the more than two dozen current and former officials interviewed for this story said they knew of any formal protest about the issue prior to the State Department’s new assertion that it has discussed the matter with Saudi leaders.

“I would not have hesitated to go to anybody — whether the crown prince or the deputy crown prince or the foreign minister — to bring up something that was distasteful or difficult,” said Joseph W. Westphal, who was the United States ambassador in Riyadh between 2014 and 2017. “It would not have been something that I shied away from if it was affecting the relationship. But it was not something that came to my desk.”

Officials offered several reasons for Washington’s lack of action. In some cases, state or local law enforcement officials had taken months to contact federal agencies to seek warrants for the suspects’ arrests for unlawful flight from prosecution. In other instances, local officials did not appear to have contacted federal agencies at all.

Although many current and former officials acknowledged having heard about individual cases of Saudis fleeing justice, some of them said they did not see a clear pattern emerge. American officials dealing with Saudi Arabia have also long been accustomed to the kingdom’s overarching concern with its image in the United States, and to the extraordinary lengths to which Saudi diplomats would often go to avoid negative publicity.

Within the federal government, information about the Saudi cases has been scattered across several agencies, none of which have had much incentive to address the problem. FBI and CIA officials in Saudi Arabia have concentrated on preserving Saudi cooperation in the fight against Islamist terrorism; matters that might jeopardize that goal have often been avoided, officials said.

For decades, Saudi Arabia’s vast oil wealth and its strategic influence in the Middle East have ensured similar deference from the State and Defense departments and the National Security Council staff. The bilateral relationship became strained after the 9/11 attacks, in which 15 of 19 hijackers were Saudi members of al-Qaida, and during the American occupation of Iraq. But the Obama administration made a concerted effort to overcome those tensions, and the Trump administration has gone further, refusing to hold the Saudi leadership accountable even after the CIA concluded that the powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, had likely ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi columnist for The Washington Post.

Since late December, Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, has pressed the departments of State, Justice and Homeland Security for information on the Saudi government’s actions in helping to repatriate Saudi students who faced criminal charges here. Wyden voiced particular outrage about the case of Fallon Smart, a 15-year-old Portland girl who was struck and killed by the speeding car of a Saudi college student in 2016.

That student, Abdulrahman Sameer Noorah, was freed from a Portland jail after the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles gave him $100,000 to cover his $1 million bail. He surrendered his passport and driver’s license to Homeland Security officials. But on a Saturday afternoon in June 2017, two weeks before Noorah was to go on trial for manslaughter, a large, black SUV picked him up at the home where he was staying and spirited him away. His ankle monitoring bracelet was later found by the roadside; a week later, he was back in Saudi Arabia — a fact that the authorities in Oregon did not learn until more than a year later.

Federal officials would not discuss their evidence in the case, but they said they believe it shows that the Saudi government helped Noorah flee the country. Investigators suspect that Saudi operatives provided the student with a replacement passport and may also have arranged for him to escape on a private jet, officials of the U.S. Marshals Service said.

But while the police found a trail of clues — including cellphones, a laptop and surveillance camera footage of the black SUV — the State Department has asserted that U.S. officials had “no concrete, credible evidence as to how Mr. Noorah effected his escape.” Without an extradition treaty, the department added in a letter to Wyden in February, there was little chance that he could be made to face justice in the United States.

“Are you as disturbed as I am that Saudi nationals have a get-out-of-jail-free card that allows them to commit abuses against children, manslaughter, rape and have no accountability?” Oregon’s other U.S. senator, Jeff Merkley, also a Democrat, asked retired Army Gen. John Abizaid last month during a hearing on his confirmation to become the administration’s ambassador to Riyadh. “When a person commits a crime in the United States, we shouldn’t — because they’re an ally that buys a lot of stuff from us — allow them to whisk their citizens out.”

While law enforcement and diplomatic officials have met to discuss the Noorah case, they insisted privately that there is little more they can do. Nor is the Trump administration considering any complaint or sanction against the Saudi government for its role in abetting the flight of Noorah and other Saudi fugitives, officials said.

The FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment for this article. An FBI spokeswoman said she could neither confirm nor deny the existence of any investigation.

In 2008, intelligence analysts at the headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement spotted a striking trend, national security officials recalled. The analysts, who monitored potential terrorist and criminal threats related to foreign students, noted a series of calls to an ICE office from a Saudi official in Washington.

The official worked at the Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission, a branch of the country’s diplomatic operation that was then located in a building near the Watergate office complex. He called periodically to ask about the visa status of various Saudi students. On further examination, the analysts found that some of the students had been charged with crimes including rape, embezzlement and theft, and that they had unlawfully fled the country, a former senior national security official said.

The mission, established in Washington in 1951, administers government scholarships overseas and helps prepare the visiting students for life in a culture very different from their own. If they ever run into trouble, they are instructed to call the mission. (If they did not, they could expect Saudi officials to call them.) Based on reporting by the FBI, U.S. intelligence analysts believed the cultural center also served as a base for undercover Saudi intelligence officers who kept tabs on the growing numbers of students in the United States.

While Saudi diplomatic activity was monitored by the FBI as part of its routine counterintelligence efforts, Saudi intelligence officers seemed to focus on what they considered misconduct by their own citizens — advocacy of Islamist radicalism, criticism of the kingdom or other “political” activity.

But the ICE analysts learned that the Saudi operatives would also intervene when a student ran into legal trouble. “The initial visit to the student in jail or court might be from their local consulate, but the intelligence officers at the cultural center would provide advice and guidance,” the former senior national security official said.

ICE officials saw some recurring features in about a dozen cases they scrutinized. In some instances, the Saudi suspects had managed to abscond even after local or state courts had confiscated their passports — raising questions about whether Saudi diplomats were providing them with new ones. Several fugitives had slipped into Mexico, apparently to circumvent U.S. immigration checks on their way home.

The ICE analysts wrote up their findings in a report that was shared within DHS. But the paper was not formally disseminated to the broader U.S. intelligence community and did not prompt any further investigation. “There were enough cases to constitute a pattern that rose to our attention, but there weren’t enough to generate the interest level for a full-fledged investigation,” the former senior official said. “Not to mention the diplomatic sensitivities.”

Those sensitivities had risen sharply after 9/11. While the immigration authorities tightened their screening of Arab and other visitors after the attacks, the FBI stepped up its scrutiny of Saudis in the United States. Concerned about apparent ties between al-Qaida and the Saudi elite, the FBI created two new units in Washington that brought together counterterrorism and counterintelligence agents to track the possible Saudi threat.

At an April 2005 meeting at the Texas ranch of President George W. Bush, Crown Prince Abdullah, who was already the de facto Saudi monarch, made a plea for the United States to reopen its doors to Saudi students. Abdullah told American friends that the experience of studying in the United States opened the minds of young Saudis, lessened the influence of his country’s fundamentalist Wahhabi clerics and strengthened the two countries’ alliance. “Part of it was having them learn about tolerance and diversity,” said Theodore Kattouf, a former U.S. ambassador in the Middle East who discussed the scholarship program with the Saudi king on several occasions.

Abdullah, who ascended to the Saudi throne later in 2005, gave his name to a major new program of government scholarships, extending subsidies to a far wider range of young people than had previously studied abroad. The king pressed his Washington allies to ease U.S. restrictions on student visas for Saudi applicants, and he found political leaders from both U.S. parties receptive to the idea that such exchanges would inevitably instill more liberal and pro-Western values in future generations of Saudi leaders.

President Barack Obama’s first ambassador to Riyadh, James B. Smith, overhauled the U.S. Embassy’s visa processing system soon after presenting his credentials in late 2009. The average wait time for a visa fell from almost four months to fewer than 10 days, he said in an interview, and by the time Smith left Riyadh in 2013, the census of Saudis studying in the United States had risen from 17,700 to 77,100, DHS figures show.

Although both countries pledged to screen the visa applicants rigorously, some FBI veterans saw the process as inadequate. “They interviewed people, they tried to do some due diligence, but it wasn’t much,” one former agent said.

The Saudi government also had its own screening procedures to identify militants, slackers and potential critics of the royal leadership, officials said. Before and sometimes after arriving in the United States, the students were briefed extensively on American social mores, with an eye to helping them to adapt to a culture radically different from their own.

A list of rules for Saudi students abroad, published by the Cultural Mission in 2017, forbids any political or religious discussions or any interviews with local news media. The students are also instructed that if they get into any trouble, or witness another Saudi student doing so, they must contact the Cultural Mission or one of the students who act as its semiofficial representatives on many college campuses.

“The Cultural Mission does keep tabs,” Smith said in an interview. “They have representatives at each of the colleges and universities, and they want to make sure that everyone behaves. They run a pretty tight ship.”

According to former U.S. national-security officials and Saudi students, the associations of Saudi students on many campuses act as an informant network for the kingdom’s intelligence services, reporting to Cultural Mission handlers or intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover. Officers of the associations, who are vetted and sometimes chosen by the Cultural Mission, report to it on meetings, activities and social media posts from other students, especially anything that might suggest Islamist militancy or criticism of the Saudi regime. Counterintelligence experts said the system resembles the approach used by China to spy on its students overseas.

“The student associations are an important part of the mechanism of control,” said Abdullah Alaoudh, a fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding, who was stripped of his Saudi government scholarship while studying law at the University of Pittsburgh. “That’s who denounced me for being a dissident. They report on you to the Cultural Mission, and the mission had a file on me with all my Twitter and Facebook posts.”

Nazer, the Saudi Embassy spokesman, said that the cases of students who have broken American laws represent “clear aberrations” among the hundreds of thousands of Saudis who have studied productively in the United States since the 1960s. He insisted they are not “a reflection on the large Saudi student population in the country, the overwhelming majority of which is law-abiding.”

In a number of cases since 2002, current and former officials said, FBI agents began investigating visiting Saudis for possible extremist ties only to have the visitors disappear. The Saudi government had gotten there first, possibly after conducting its own surveillance of social media platforms, or being warned by its student network, or becoming aware of the bureau’s surveillance.

One former federal law enforcement official described a 2014 incident in which a Saudi student reported to the Cultural Mission about Islamist material that two fellow students had posted on the internet. Although the content did not violate any American laws, the two students were sent home immediately.

“You’d be running a case against a guy, and the next thing you know, he would be gone,” said another former FBI official, Frank Montoya Jr., who headed the agency’s counterintelligence effort. “The bureau has struggled since 9/11 on whether or not we should see them as an ally in the fight against terrorism.”

Current and former national security officials said the Saudis’ interventions complicated their efforts to determine if the suspects were involved in wider plots or had accomplices. Often, the Saudis were not responsive to FBI requests for information about the suspects who had vanished, the officials added.

The Saudis’ early warning system had long protected members of influential families and other Saudi visitors to the United States. In order to safeguard the kingdom’s image, Saudi diplomats often hurried to repatriate businessmen, students or others who got into trouble, preferably before any legal action could be taken against them.

“There was a practice if somebody got into trouble where they called the embassy and the embassy would come and scoop them up before charges were filed,” Smith said. “The Saudis didn’t want any embarrassment. They would take them out in the middle of the night.”

National security officials said that system began to operate more frequently and sometimes more aggressively as the number of Saudi students in the United States grew. In one such case, Saudi officials put up $65,000 to cover the $650,000 bond of an 18-year-old student, Ali Alhamoud, after he was jailed on charges of raping a young woman in a small town near the Oregon coast. Within hours after he was bailed out of jail, Alhamoud boarded a plane and flew home, court records show.

“It’s essentially a rendition of their own citizens,” said David Rubincam, who took over as the FBI’s legal attache in Riyadh in 2008, just as the scholarship program was starting to grow. “There were a lot of less-visible situations where they would pull a student back. The more students, the more likelihood of problems. That’s just the math.”

Military and Homeland Security officials noted that under current U.S. procedures, foreign citizens would show up on border security watchlists only after they had been convicted of crimes; arrests and pending charges would not necessarily alert U.S. border officials or airlines.

Although members of Congress and others have long advocated for exit controls on visiting foreigners — and the lack of such controls was a pointed criticism by the 9/11 Commission — successive U.S. administrations have failed to impose them, citing high costs and cumbersome logistics.

The cases uncovered by The Oregonian/OregonLive have suggested that accused students made their way home with assistance from people knowledgeable about skirting the U.S. immigration system.

In 2014, Abdullah Almakrami fled from Milwaukee after he had been arrested on suspicion of sexual assault and false imprisonment. Although his passport had been seized, he surfaced months later in Saudi Arabia, where he posted comments on a social media account about food and the weather.

The following year, the Saudi Consulate put up the $500,000 bail for Waleed Ali Alharthi, a student at Oregon State University who was found to have a cache of child pornography on his computer and was charged with 10 counts of encouraging child sexual abuse. Although the court had confiscated his passport, Alharthi escaped to Mexico City — somehow obtaining a new passport along the way — and investigators believe he flew to Paris on his way back to the kingdom, officials say.

It is generally not possible to leave the United States by plane without a passport. National security officials said it was implausible that young Saudis on the run could obtain replacement passports or travel into Mexico by land without help. They suspect that Saudi operatives accompany or guide the fugitives.

The Saudi Embassy, unlike many others, routinely posts bail and hires criminal defense lawyers for its citizens when they are accused of crimes in the United States. But Nazer, the embassy spokesman, said it does not “issue travel documents to citizens engaged in legal proceedings.”

Danik, one of the former FBI officials who served in Riyadh, recalled dealing with cases of Saudis who fled despite the fact that U.S. courts had seized their passports. “I remember in some cases local police and U.S.-based FBI agents were angry,” he said. They would call the legal attache’s office in Riyadh afterward asking: ‘How did he get out of the U.S.?’ I told them if they’d have notified us beforehand, I could ve possibly filed an affidavit opposing bail because Saudis arrested in the U.S. were often a flight risk.

“There were no complaints we lodged with the Saudis,” Danik added. “That just wasn’t something that was going to happen.”

Although many former U.S. national security officials said they had been aware episodically of fugitives disappearing with suspected help of the Saudi government, the issue never rose anywhere near the level of pressing geopolitical concerns, current and former officials said. Chief among those concerns was ensuring the continued cooperation on counterterrorism issues of a secretive monarchy whose fundamentalist brand of Islam was widely considered to be a central force in the rise of Islamist terrorism.

“My job as legal attache was to get as much information as I could from the Saudis on terrorism,” a former FBI agent said. “If I am talking to them about their nationals committing crimes in the United States, it’s going to shut me down. It’s not my lane. It would be handled through diplomatic channels.”

Saudi Arabia became a critical partner for the CIA and FBI against a rising militant group that posed a surprisingly direct threat to the United States: al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP. The group, an offshoot of the Osama bin Laden organization, plotted repeatedly to bomb aircraft bound for the United States and came dangerously close in 2009 when a bomber with explosives hidden in his underwear nearly brought down a jetliner. Later, the Saudis became an important ally in the fight against ISIS, which included several thousand Saudi fighters and carried out attacks in Saudi Arabia.

Although the U.S. Embassy continued to receive periodic communications from the United States about Saudi fugitives evading justice, terrorism always dominated the workload, former officials said. Some former FBI agents said senior CIA officials in the kingdom, who had an even closer and more fruitful relationship with the Saudi security services, were especially reluctant to raise issues like the Saudis’ help to fleeing students.

Former FBI officials also said they believed their ambassadors — from both the Bush and Obama administrations — would have been reluctant to confront Saudi leaders over the matter. Several former senior diplomats who served in Riyadh disputed that notion, insisting that the discussion of such issues was an unavoidable part of their jobs. The two previous U.S. ambassadors, Smith and Westphal, said that they had only heard vague and isolated reports about Saudi students fleeing trouble in the United States, and that they had never been asked by either their subordinates or officials in Washington to raise the issue with the Saudi government.

But other foreign policy officials said there is an inherent danger in relationships like the U.S.-Saudi one that American diplomats and other officials try to avoid seemingly smaller, quotidian problems to focus on the highest-priority matters.

“There is always a risk for the officials who handle these bilateral relationships day to day that you follow the impulse to manage or even smooth over an issue, rather than stepping back and recognizing it as something serious that needs to be confronted,” said a former senior Obama administration official. “That is especially true with countries where our interests or values don’t align.”

Several former officials emphasized that FBI and CIA personnel in Saudi Arabia had a powerful sense of responsibility to protect Americans from terrorist attacks. But Fawn Lengvenis, the mother of the 15-year-old girl struck and killed in Portland, Fallon Smart, said the government had left her family and other Americans vulnerable to a different kind of threat.

“It’s heartbreaking to learn that our government has, for over a decade, known that the Saudi government has helped so many Saudi students charged with serious crimes skip bail and escape back to Saudi Arabia without any accountability,” she said in a statement.

Many former diplomats and national security officials also said they suspected the Saudi government had grown more brazen in support of its accused citizens as its defiance of local and state courts had been ignored by successive administrations in Washington. Given the Trump administration’s staunch backing for Crown Prince Mohammed in the aftermath of the Khashoggi murder, they added, many were skeptical that those circumstances would change.

“Right now, the Saudis think they have carte blanche in our country,” Montoya, the former FBI counterintelligence official, said. “Given the support that they are getting now, they literally can get away with murder.”

Update, April 26, 2019: This story has been updated to add that an FBI spokeswoman said she could neither confirm nor deny the existence of any investigation.

The Oregonian/OregonLive is partnering with ProPublica to go deeper. For that, we could use your help. Do you know of instances where Saudi nationals studying in the United States have been accused of a crime but then escaped prosecution? Help us investigate.

Bernie’s Powerful Proposal to Enfranchise America’s Prisoners

What follows is a conversation between Truthdig contributor Norman Solomon, attorney Anoa Changa and Jacqueline Luqman of the Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

JAKE TAPPER [CNN] Senator Sanders earlier this evening said he’s in favor of felons being able to vote even while serving their prison terms. He was asked specifically about people like the Boston Marathon bomber, people convicted of sexual assault, rape, and other things, pedophiles. What do you think? Should people convicted of sexual assault, the Boston Marathon bomber— should they be able to vote?

PETE BUTTIGIEG While incarcerated? No, I don’t think so. [applause] I do believe that when you are out, when you have served your sentence, then part of being restored to society is that you are part of the political life of this nation again. And one of the things that needs to be restored, is your right to vote. But part of the punishment when you are convicted of a crime and you are incarcerated, is you lose certain rights. You lose your freedom. And I think during that period, it does not make sense to have an exception for the right to vote.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN Hi. I’m Jacqueline Luqman with The Real News Network. This is our weekly segment on trending topics where we discuss some of the significant news items from the past week. One of those big issues was the CNN town hall and the question of voting rights for the incarcerated. And of course, Senator Joe Biden has finally announced that he is running for the Democratic nomination for president. Here to talk about these issues with me this week are Norman Solomon. Norman is the National Coordinator for RootsAction.org. Hi, Norman. And, Anoa Changa. Anoa is an attorney and a Director of Political Advocacy for Progressive Army. She’s also the host of the highly recommended podcast The Way with Anoa. Hi, Anoa.

ANOA CHANGA Hi, Jackie.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN Thank you both for joining me today.

ANOA CHANGA Thank you for having us.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN Alright. Let’s start. Let’s jump right in with the CNN town hall this week because a lot of talk is centered around Bernie Sanders wanting the Boston bomber and rapists to vote. Like this subhead in The New York Times recap of the town hall says, it reads that Sanders backs voting rights for the Boston bomber and rapists. But what Sanders really said was this. I think we have the clip from what Sanders said at the town hall.

BERNIE SANDERS I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy. Yes, even for terrible people because once you start chipping away and you say, “well that guy committed a terrible crime– not going to let him vote.” Or, “that person did that– not going to let that person vote.” You’re running down a slippery slope. So I believe that people commit crimes, they pay the price. When they got out of jail, I believe they certainly should have the right to vote. But I do believe that even if they are in jail, they’re paying their price to society, but that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our democracy. [applause]

CHRIS CUOMO [CNN] Applause for the answer. My follow up question goes to this being like, you’re writing an opposition ad against you by saying you think the Boston Marathon bombers should vote not after he pays his debt to society, but while he’s in jail. You sure about that? [crowd laughs]

BERNIE SANDERS Look. You know, this is what I believe. Do you believe in democracy? Do you believe that every single American 18 years of age or older, who is an American citizen, has the right to vote? Once you start chipping away at that, believe me, that’s what our Republican governors all over this country are doing. They come up with all kinds of excuses why people of color, young people, poor people can’t vote, and I will do everything I can to resist it.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN You gotta love Sanders’s enthusiasm when he responds to this question and I want to start with you, Anoa, and ask you specifically about the role the media played in the way this question was framed. What’s your take on how CNN framed this question and how it played out for Sanders and Pete Buttigieg?

ANOA CHANGA Well I will say, if the question is like other questions for other town halls, the student who asked it more than likely wrote it. They may have helped tweak it some, but that came from that person. But I think your question about how the media has helped frame it— before this town hall, Bernie Sanders did actually come out and say he did believe that incarcerated persons should vote, which I believe is probably what prompted the question to begin with. But part of the problem with the spin has been, they stuck with the problematic framing in the actual question, as very extreme examples provided. Even you see Lindsey Graham like, oh my God. That means he thinks Dylann Roof who murdered x, y, z people in x, y, z occurrence should get to vote— trying to inflame rhetoric and we know that this is an industry that’s heavily driven by clicks, by headlines. Most, 60 percent of Americans do not read past the headline in most instances, so it is driving a particular narrative. But when you really dig deep and you start looking at it, and you see most of the major civil rights organizations, legal organizations, pushing back and also saying, “duh. This is a no brainer. Bernie Sanders is right because voter suppression of any form should not be tolerated.” We should not be writing caveats into really what is one of the most fundamental rights that we should be protecting. And as in many states, we see that the right to vote has actually been severely eroded in many occurrences. Now when we’re talking about incarcerated persons, incarcerated persons are good enough to go fight fires for pennies on the dollar. They’re good enough to be counted for when you draw congressional districts. They are counted as part of that population, but they’re denied the opportunity to vote and participate. One thing that I always thought was really great from last cycle was, Rachel Rollins, who’s now D.A. of Suffolk County which is around Boston— in their D.A. primary race, there was actually a forum that was held with incarcerated persons in the county asking questions of the D.A. candidates and what they would do on criminal justice reforms, etc. I think being able to have those people participating in the process and not being shut out because we see just what the re-enfranchisement of voters in Florida, how Republicans— but it’s not only just Republicans in Florida. Instances predominately Republican-led to just create an extra hurdle to the amendment that overwhelmingly passed with support of Floridians and we see now they’re trying to put these other barriers in, but what basically amounts to a poll tax. So there are all these very nuanced aspects to this very basic idea that Bernie Sanders is discussing, which the lack of nuance sometimes with him is one of my major critiques of the way he communicates ideas and issues. And I just felt that instead of accepting her problematic, extreme framing which is what everyone ran with in headlines, it could have been flipped on his head. But I thought overall, he’s absolutely right-on about this whole premise that when we start eroding, deciding, and picking and choosing who is valuable, who can vote, and who cannot— we start to create a slippery slope. We already see that happening in many states across the country.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN You raised a lot of great issues, but I think the one that stuck out to me the most was that the statistic that 60 percent of Americans don’t read past the headline. So what we get from the media is driven by clicks, is driven by sensationalism, and there is this nuance that is very, very important in this discussion that Sanders seems to have done a good job with. He also seems to have had a better reception at the Fox News town hall with explaining Medicare for All than he did here. And even some on the Left have come out against him on this issue from this town hall. But there’s also been pushback against CNN for this framing, like this tweet from Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and her response. But Norman, I want to ask you, when we’re talking about the framing of this discussion and the fact that incarcerated people were not included in this discussion in the town hall, that this was an audience of students from a local college, I believe— is this really an issue of, as The New York Times framed it, “giving terrorists and rapists the right to vote,” or is this a bigger problem with corporate influence in the media that we need to pay attention to?

NORMAN SOLOMON A lot of the problem with corporate media is continuing to depict some people as the other, prisoners among them but more generally and more subtly often, just people of color or those who don’t have a lot of power in this society. And if we’re going to look at this particular instance, it’s not just CNN and cable news. As you noted, The New York Times took the most retrograde, opportunistic, and slanderous way to frame Bernie Sanders’s response. And what I think we need to look at very strongly and very clearly, is that this issue is the Willie Horton issue so far of this presidential campaign. As in 1988, the racist ad against Michael Dukakis by the George Herbert Walker Bush forces, were also playing on racism and the fear of prisoners and trying to exploit some of the most racist tropes that have been in place for centuries in this country. And frankly, I’m outraged that The New York Times and other media outlets would take a principled position by Bernie Sanders against perverse oppression and turn it around and try to exploit the most extreme interpretations of what he said, to make this Willie Horton-2019. And so, I just think we have to push back on this and recognize that this is part of a propaganda assault.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN This is some really great comparisons. These are some great comparisons you made Norman about the similarities to the Willie Horton campaign and the Dukakis campaign. This is journalistic history, or campaign and political history, that we need to be reminded of when we’re looking at the role of corporate media in our politics today. Anoa, let me give you the last word on this. What role does independent media play in this campaign cycle? Is it a bigger role than last time? What role does independent media play in these types of issues?

ANOA CHANGA Well I appreciate that. This is how we first crossed paths, right? I think that in this cycle, just as we saw the past cycle, there is a really high burden whether it’s right or wrong. It’s the value proposition that we often say that we have as progressive, independent media folks, that we’re trying to parse through the b.s. and really get good commentary, get straight to the issues, and inform people of what’s going on. So I do think that we do have this standard to really, actually, effectively discuss these issues to help raise the voices of people who are doing directly the work and get people actual information. I don’t remember who shared it, but someone shared a report from The Sentencing Project. The Sentencing Project has been talking about incarcerated persons voting while incarcerated for probably almost two decades. I think I saw something that was actually dated 1999, so this is not a new thing that Bernie Sanders just thought of. This is something that’s been well-thought and often discussed by a lot of people. When you look at the containing conditions of those who are incarcerated here— and we focus so much on the federal prison system or private prisons— but the majority of people who are in prison in this country, are in state and local holding. And the conditions that people are in— just recent accounts from Fulton County and DeKalb County jails down here in Georgia are appalling. We’re seeing issues of strikes, of starvation, people having issues with being exposed to mold, all types of stuff. I remember, real quickly, during the 2014 West Virginia water crisis in Charleston, West Virginia, incarcerated persons were being given the equivalent of I think it was one bottle of water per day. And this was a time where as a community, as a county-wide area, we were on a 10-day water ban, so no water for anything. They were being given one bottle. So when we’re saying that we’re not allowing people to participate civically in what is happening, we’re saying that they don’t— we, as in the people who are saying— saying that these people are not people. They’re second class citizens. They don’t count as much as we do and that’s a problem. And again, like Bernie Sanders just said, when we start creating special classes of people as we’ve already seen, he was talking about going back to a different era, that’s exactly the type of rhetoric we’re hearing from people is actually enforcing and supporting. And we already have a steep climb to getting people re-enfranchised who’ve already been disenfranchised from the system. So these barriers that are there, are kept up, are problematic. I think independent media has a real, serious burden on us. And really, it should be our welcomed burden to make sure that were upholding good conversations as truthful commentary as possible, and really digging deep and doing critical analysis, even if it means calling our faves on the carpet.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN And you know, we’ve certainly done plenty of that. [laughter] Thank you guys so much for joining me today on this segment. Unfortunately, we are out of time on this segment. But Norman, Anoa— stick around for the next segment where we will talk about Joe Biden’s announcement. Thank you all for watching this segment of trending news on The Real News Network. I am Jacqueline Luqman.