![[Skip to Page Content]](graphics/skip_sliver.jpg){kind=small}
|
       |
 
 |
The Palestine-Israel Conflict in the U.S. Courtroom
Determining what is a reasonable expectation of privacy becomes more problematic as modern businesses and Government agencies demand increasing amounts of information concerning our private lives. That is because whenever a person gives up private information to a third party—such as a bank or the telephone company—the expectation of privacy is relinquished. The government can seize such information without a warrant. This was the type of issue that confronted Abdeen Jabara, a Michigan lawyer and second-generation American born to parents of Lebanese origin. In the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Jabara began to travel the country, defending the rights of Arabs and condemning the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and people. His lectures and writings sharply criticized U.S. policy toward the Middle East and supported the struggle of the Palestinians, including the PLO. Whenever he spoke before Arab students, he decried their harassment by U.S. government agencies, such as the FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and frequently urged them to take legal action to publicize and stop such unlawful activities. From 1967 to 1975, the Detroit attorney was the unsuspecting target of an intensive FBI investigation which included telephone taps, mail intercepts, and monitoring his writings and speeches. As revealed in court records, it was part of a massive surveillance campaign—code named Operation Boulder, inaugurated by the Nixon Administration in Autumn 1972 allegedly to uncover Arab “terrorist” operations in the United States. Headed by Secretary of State William Rogers, the operation was coordinated with the FBI, INS, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Internal Revenue Service and Transportation Department. In the two months following the Palestinian assault against Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic games in September 1972, 78 Arabs were deported from the United States. Hundreds, perhaps thousands more, were interrogated, photographed and finger-printed by FBI and INS agents. Some were jailed and forced to pay high bond for no reason, or for technical visa violations which normally are excused.10 Central to Operation Boulder was the gathering of political information. Clearly, U.S. authorities wanted to learn peoples’ political beliefs and the political positions of the various Arab or Arab-American organizations on the Palestine conflict. As in Jabara’s subsequent lawsuit against the FBI would reveal, much of this information was shared with Israeli intelligence. Jabara first heard of the investigation when his bank advised him of a FBI request for all his past account records. Following five years of lawsuits to gain access to his government files, Jabara determined the extent of the seven-year surveillance and investigation by various U.S. Government intelligence agencies. Most surprising was that surveillance continued even after the Government concluded that he was innocent of any criminal activity. Federal Judge Ralph Freeman observed that the factual “record is devoid of any evidence linking (Jabara) to the commission or anticipated commission or anticipated commission of any specific crime, and concluded that “the investigation was not wholly prompted by legitimate or good faith national security concerns.”11 Once the FBI recognized that Jabara posed no threat to the U.S., it turned to the political ideas and movements of Jabara and his friends. A vast network of FBI informants and agents tracked Jabara as he traveled across the country, infiltrating the public and private meetings he attended and forwarding to FBI headquarters summaries of what he and those in attendance said. The district court in which Jabara brought suit found the FBI “preoccupied” with Jabara’s political views and his encouragement that Arabs mount legal challenges to FBI investigation. It also recognized that the Palestine conflict was central to the FBI’s intelligence gathering. Observed Judge Freeman, “the presence of FBI informants at meetings and discussions attended by Jabara does not appear to have resulted solely from an investigatory interest in Jabara. Included in information regarding Jabara is data which the FBI has received from Zionist sources.” Evidence outside the legal record suggests that many Jewish college and community organizations spied on Jabara and other pro-Arab activists. The district court cryptically noted that the FBI shared information concerning Jabara with “17 government agencies and three foreign governments.” One aspect of this international intelligence gathering included a FBI request to the National Security Agency to target, record and transmit to the FBI all of Jabara’s overseas telephone conversations. The NSA, the U.S. Government’s largest and most secret intelligence agency whose principal duty is to intercept and record all worldwide electronic communications, forwarded at least six such communications. Jabara challenged the NSA action as a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, arguing that his right to be free from illegal searches and seizures was violated when the NSA turned over his “seized” overseas telephone conversations to the FBI without a warrant. Permitting the warrantless transfer of information concerning a private U.S. citizen by the NSA to another government agency, his attorneys reasoned, would create a loophole in Fourth Amendment protection.
Next Page
|
 |
Special Reports:
|
Printer Friendly Version of this Article