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<h5><b>Features > January 19, 2007<br><br>
<br>
</b></h5><h1><b>Kiko Martinez: Watch Listed for Life<br>
</b></h1><h3><b>By
<a href="http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2981//site/about/author/109">
Kari
Lydersen</a></b></h3><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2981/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2981/<br><br>
</a>Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Francisco “Kiko” Martinez, a Colorado
civil rights attorney and long-time Chicano activist, was flying home
from visiting family in Washington state. At the Salt Lake City airport,
federal officials barred him from making his connecting flight back to
Colorado. After they questioned and prohibited him from boarding his
flight, he ended up taking a bus home.<br><br>
Turns out he was on the “no fly” list, a shadowy roster of thousands of
people the government has identified as potentially having links to
terrorism. People can end up on the list because of legal political
activity or membership in legal groups; or just because they have the
same name as someone the government is keeping an eye on. Those
erroneously listed have included an Air Force sergeant, an attorney, a
minister and even children.<br><br>
Since November 2001, the Transportation Security Administration has
adhered to two lists: a “no fly” list that prevents people from boarding
any commercial airliner and a “select list” that subjects them to extra
screening and questioning.<br><br>
In 2003 a broader “U.S. master terror watch list” combined 12 government
lists into a register of more than 100,000 people. The list, officially
called the FBI-CIA Terrorist Threat Integration Center, is meant to
“create a structure to institutionalize sharing across agency lines of
all terrorist threat intelligence,” according to a government fact
sheet.<br><br>
Martinez likely made it onto these lists because of 1973 charges related
to package bombs sent by Chicano activist groups. He fled to Mexico from
Colorado, saying he feared for his life since local police officers were
out to get him. He eventually went to trial in 1980 after crossing back
into the United States. The charges were either dropped or ended in
acquittals.<br><br>
On three other occasions while driving, Martinez, 60, has also been
detained by law enforcement for no obvious reason beyond his activist
past. In July 2000, police held him after he got a speeding ticket in
Pueblo, Colo., and in December 2004, in Morris, Ill., when he and his
family were driving back from a national cross-country meet his son was
competing in.<br><br>
Most recently, he was detained on April 19, 2005. While driving back from
giving a speech at the University of New Mexico, a state trooper and
Pojoaque tribal officer pulled Martinez over. He was held while the
officers called an FBI agent, who asked questions, then ordered his
release. This summer he filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Santa
Fe challenging the detention.<br><br>
And on Dec. 4, Martinez filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in
Chicago, charging that Illinois state police and local FBI agents
violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and
seizure during the Morris traffic stop. Since Martinez can’t fly, at a
Chicago press conference about the lawsuit, attorney Jim Fennerty of the
National Lawyer’s Guild placed his photo on an empty chair with a phone
broadcasting his voice to media.<br><br>
The next day, Martinez spoke with <i>In These Times</i>.<br><br>
<b>How did you end up on the watch list?<br><br>
</b>I was placed on the Violent Gang and Terrorist Organization File
(VGTOF). Basically the only guidelines for being placed on that list are
that a police officer nominates you. That’s what we think happened to me.
The government won’t confirm or deny it. The only way we figured it out
is on the police reports from Colorado and New Mexico it mentions the
VGTOF.<br><br>
<b>What effect has this had on your life and work?<br><br>
</b>We supposedly have a constitutional right to travel, but I can’t get
on a plane. If I drive, even the slightest infraction can result in a
detention of one to three hours or more. I have to be careful who I
travel with because I don’t want to subject most people to what I have to
go through if I’m stopped.<br><br>
And. of course, there’s the racial profiling that happens on most
highways. The time I was stopped in Colorado [in 2000], I think it was
racial profiling. I was driving an Oldsmobile sedan fixed up nice, they
probably thought a young gangster was driving it.<br><br>
The world is a fast place these days, so this has really slowed me down,
since I can’t fly or drive long distances.<br><br>
<b>Do you truly feel you are not able to fly? <br><br>
</b>I wasn’t allowed to fly before. I don’t want to subject myself to
that humiliation again.<br><br>
<b>How does the current surveillance and monitoring of activists or
suspected dissidentsthrough things like the watch listcompare to the
situation in the ’60s and ’70s?<br><br>
</b>The current technology enables them to access and use that data much
quicker than in the ’60s and ’70s. Then, the police would have contact
cards they’d keep on people. Now, they just type your information into a
computer and it comes up.<br><br>
<b>Do you think the government intends this watch list to have a chilling
effect on political speech or activity?<br><br>
</b>I’m sure they figured it would. It chills people’s will to exercise
their First Amendment rights. A lot of people are afraid they will lose
their job or it will affect their family [if they get placed on a list
like this].<br><br>
I see this as the next generation of COINTELPRO [the infamous FBI program
run from 1956 to 1971 which tried to destabilize dissident groups through
harassment, surveillance and infiltration]. It’s set up to destroy and
neutralize things.<br><br>
After Watergate and the Nixon era, there was a movement to prevent the
government from spying on people unless they really had a reason to. But
this so-called war on terror has given them a pretext to increase spying
again. People are starting to speak out about it, but who knows when the
next terrorist attack will happen? Then that will mean they can take away
even more of our rights.<br><br>
<b>Along with activist histories like yours, what current activities or
affiliations do you think are landing people on the list?<br><br>
</b>Environmentalists, immigrant-rights advocates, attorneys and
individuals who speak out on behalf of those who are targeted, antiwar
activists, media persons who are not embedded with the government, black
nationalists, Puerto Rican <i>independentistas</i>, indigenous nation
advocates and others who struggle against corporations and the government
dominated by corporations [are all at risk].<br><br>
<b>You were involved in radical movements tied to violence 30 years ago.
Do you think there’s a valid reason for having you on a list like
this?<br><br>
</b>The guidelines for the VGTOF say you must be part of an “ongoing
organization.” But these things happened 25 or 30 years ago. The state
has such a long memory, even if generations of agents have passed on,
they will keep you on the list.<br><br>
But if they just followed their own guidelines, I wouldn’t be on it. Also
it says you can only be detained if they have reason to believe you have
or are about to commit a crime. They had no reason to believe that with
me.<br><br>
<b>Do you think this list is at all effective in preventing
terrorism?<br><br>
</b>No, the way police usually find out something’s afoot is through
informantsbeing there on the street. This is just random stops and
searches and seizures. Many people don’t know their constitutional rights
and will agree to searches.<br><br>
As a tactical matter, it’s hard to tell a policeman no. If you buck them
a little, it gets them mad. With police so aggressive, with Tasers and
steroid rages [refusing a search could mean trouble]. Most of the
country’s interstates are considered drug routes, so an officer could
always use the pretext of the war on drugs.<br><br>
<b>What do you hope to accomplish with the lawsuits?<br><br>
</b>Something productive will come of it. At least we are able to engage
the government, otherwise they would never talk to you about it. We’re
hoping by bringing more attention to this, more people will take steps to
find out if they are on the list.<br><br>
<b>What do you think will happen with the cases filed in Chicago and New
Mexico?<br><br>
</b>Well, they’ve assigned the Chicago case to Judge Amy St. Eve, [a Bush
II appointee] who’s hearing the Muhammad Salah case [a Chicago area
grocer accused of financing Hamas]. She’s made some terrible moves in
that case. In New Mexico, the government is saying they don’t want their
agents deposed, they don’t want discovery; that the case involves state
secrets and national security.<br><br>
Not all judges are falling into lockstep with the Department of Justice.
Some judges are ruling against the government, so the Department of
Justice is trying to settle cases so the Bush gang can continue its
imperial presidency and be a secret government.<br><br>
<b>Are you hoping to get off the list?<br><br>
</b>I don’t think you can ever really get off the list. They’ll always
have another generation of lists.<br>
<b>Kari Lydersen</b> writes for the <i>Washington Post</i> out of the
Midwest bureau and just published a book, <i>Out of the Sea and Into the
Fire: Latin American-US Immigration in the Global Age</i>.<br><br>
<a href="http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2981//about/author/109">
More information about Kari Lydersen</a> <br><br>
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