Maybe this book got buried in the rising slag-heap mountain of titles exposing the bald-faced lies of George Bush and his puppeteers. Or perhaps somebody thought that Patriots Act was just some un-ironic, dry policy look at the crazy, paranoid post-9/11 government policy that started ripping out the Constitution like so much stained green shag carpet in a North Las Vegas motel.Not at all!This collection of personal stories -- an oral history in the mode of the legendary Studs Terkel, where the interviewer gets the key subjects talking straight from the soul -- is like a heat-seeking missile, right on target with the issues tearing our nation and the world apart.
Don't be fooled by the quiet decency of the book's subjects, some of them famous, some of them unknown, but all of them willing to stick their necks out for principle. It's bracing to read the words of Daniel Ellsberg, the defense analyst who risked all to leak the Pentagon Papers to stop the Vietnam War; or of triple amputee, Vietnam war vet and former Veterans Administration director and U.S. Senator from Georgia Max Cleland who talks about how our power-mad leaders led our young soldiers into Iraq and toward the same misguided charnel house that consumed his generation in Vietnam. Or why former FBI agent Colleen Rowley risked her long career to reveal how internecine federal agency warfare and career caution at the FBI made the U.S. vulnerable to the tragic Al Qaeda attacks of 2001.
More subtle in the book are the gray men and women, loyal to government service and principle, like Rand Beers, who took over from Richard Clarke as White House counter-terror advisor. Beers later resigned in protest five days before the nation went to war in Iraq on false pretenses. More moving yet in the book are the smallest and most vulnerable of our residents and citizens, like the Syrian-American teenager who was thrown into INS prison with her mother for nine months in a mass sweep of our Arabic populace in the wake of 9/11. Convince methat she is not a more patriotic adherent of democracy than most of us.
But tucked away in the book's center of these portraits of high character in low times is a shocker right in synch with today's headlines.And I mean today!-- when the British MI-5 and other security agencies stopped a plot by suicidal jihadis aiming to blow up a dozen airliners traveling from Great Britain to the America.Smack in the middle of Patriots Act is an incendiary interview with former FAA counter-terrorist Red Team member Bogdan Dzakovic. As part of the Red Team, Dzakovic zealously tested airport and airplane security measures. He and team members simulated terrorist attacks. They posed as hijackers. They snuck bombs and weapons onto aircraft. Dzakovic 's Red Team succeeded and found aviation security lacking nearly nine times out of ten, but the politically compromised FAA reacted not with proper alarm and concern, but with apathy, embarrassment and cover-ups. When Dkakovic went public with his findings as a whistleblower, theFAA punished him.It buried him and his career in a bureaucratic closet. Read his chapter and you will be horrified to know that America is not safer today even though billions have been wasted by Homeland Security. But, airline passengers are much more miserable. I wish there were more patriots in this country like this Red Team member. Or like Ellsberg, Cleland, Rowley....
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Patriots Act: Voices of Dissent and the Risk of Speaking Out (Hardcover)
This is a wonderful collection of the best of Minnesota writers and artists. There are essays by a wide range of Minnesotans, living and dead, from the humor of Garrison Keillor to the remembrances of African-Americanauthor Evelyn Fairbanks. The photographs are stunning, including anincredible head-on view of a grey owl in flight and beautiful portraits ofthe diverse Minnesota landscape. The rest of the country must surely envythe incredible talent we have here in Minnesota!
