Freedom on the Rocks: Surveillance State Roots

Excerpts from Vanguard Press feature story, April 29, 1980

By Greg Guma

Political rights are so easily taken for granted – until they’re threatened or curtailed by repressive laws. In the United States, they are usually most vulnerable when people are anxious about some outside threat.

     After World War II, for instance, dissent became risky as relations with Russia hardened into Cold War I. Hysteria about domestic Communist subversion led quickly to state and congressional investigations of “un-American activities.” And in 1951, a Supreme Court decision led to the imprisonment of eleven Communist leaders, not for any overt acts threatening national security, but rather for trying to organize a political party and teach Marxism.

     Today the threats to political liberty are no less imminent.

     The groundwork was actually laid when a proposal for a massive rewrite of the US criminal code became the Nixon administration’s blueprint for crushing dissent and savaging the Bill of Rights. After Watergate and FBI-CIA revelations, proposed charters for the intelligence community were exploited as springboards to legalize intrusive techniques. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court moved toward prior restraint of free speech.

     Prior restraint of the press became government policy in March 1979 when The Progressive magazine was prevented from publishing an article on the H-bomb. The ban succeeded for six months, on grounds that the 1954 Atomic Energy Act gave the government the right to suppress nuclear knowledge. Although the case was eventually dropped, the law may very well be used again.

     Support from other publications was slow in coming, possibly because the case involved a small Wisconsin monthly rather than a daily giant like The New York Times’ publication of the Pentagon Papers. The press gag ended only when other researchers found and printed the same “secrets.”

     Even though the government dropped its case, it asserted that the section on violating national security secrets in the Atomic Energy Act would continue to be enforced, one of several “loaded pistols aimed at the First Amendment,” as writer Nat Hentoff put it.

     In February 1980, the Supreme Court ruled, in the case of ex-CIA agent Frank Snepp, that government agencies have the right to restrict publication of national security information – even if the material is unclassified – when the book or article has been produced by a government worker with access to “confidential sources.”

     The Court had effectively usurped the lawmaking powers of Congress and gone a long way toward enacting an American version of the British Official Secrets Act. In a letter to The New York Times, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who was working with Ted Kennedy at the time, said that an Official Secrets Act might not be needed since “we have one now.”

     The decision went further that penalizing one CIA employee for breaking his contract. Any government worker in a relationship of trust with his agency, whether or not a written agreement exists, could have rights to speech diminished. The high court, with four Nixon appointees in the majority, buttressed lower court decisions involving CIA censorship of ex-agent Victor Marchetti. That case dealt with classified material, and the Court set up a powerful precedent for prior restraint that violated the public’s right to know.

     In the 1950s and afterward, the intelligence community saw itself in a war with those who supposedly threatened the existing social order. Programs conducted in the heat of the Cold War ranged from multi-million dollar covert actions worldwide – secret support for pro-American political parties, destabilization of “unfriendly” regimes, arms transfers, training and propaganda – to a wide range of domestic “counter-intelligence” efforts.

     Americans were shocked to learn that the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency (NSA) and others had conducted massive campaigns of spying and subversion directed at American citizens, most of whom had never committed any crimes.

     After the revelations of the mid-1970s Congress moved toward defining a set of standards, to be codified in several laws. But by the time the first of these, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was passed in 1978, the mood had already changed. There was little objection when CIA Director Stansfield Turner nullified regulations banning the use of journalists, academics and the clergy in intelligence work.     

     Under a 1978 Presidential order on intelligence work, an investigation or covert project could be initiated if a person was “reasonably believed” to be involved in activities which may or may not involve legal violations, or was aiding or conspiring in these possible activities. Reasonable belief as a standard does not require concrete evidence that a law is being broken. The “potential” for a threat can be enough.

     As pressures for action in the Middle East mounted, President Carter asked for a freer rein in initiating programs (the CIA was already supplying arms to rebels in Afghanistan, according to several sources). Carter also wanted less public access to CIA information. One proposal was to bar US citizens from obtaining information about any program that didn’t directly involve the individual.

     Critics of this exemption to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) said it would damage historical and journalistic research and informed public debate. Yet, in a hasty reaction to international tensions, congressional oversight and an independent check of intelligence operations became another casualty of the obsession with “national security.”

Maverick Chronicles: Cracks in the Iceberg

This is the tenth chapter of a series excerpted from “Maverick Chronicles,” a memoir-in-progress. Previous stories can be found at VTDigger.

By Greg Guma

Before Burlington’s progressive revolution in 1981, the Vermont Vanguard Press was the Champlain Valley's strongest voice for change to emerge in years, hosting a hungry crew of young journalists, activists and thinkers who frequently shook up the status quo. Although an alternative newspaper certainly didn’t qualify as a political movement, the dividing line was less than obvious.

     Editorial board meetings often became encounter groups where ideology clashed with the desire for respectability and the need for advertisers. It was certainly a voice of opposition, bringing problems like Burlington’s housing crisis, homelessness, environmental threats, the nuclear arms race, the perils of urban growth and the decaying dynasty inside city hall into the mainstream of public consciousness.     

Mayor Paquette

     Mayor Gordon Paquette recognized the threat, and, after the newspaper published an article criticizing his decision to ban rock music in local venues, he decided to counter-attack. Paquette sued the paper and its editors for libel. The case centered on the allegation that he was drunk on the night when he attended a Supertramp concert in Memorial Auditorium and found some concertgoers too rowdy for his taste.

     After we published the story, Paquette tried to force a retraction and get the names of our anonymous sources. When we refused he sued, which led to even more bad press. Convinced that the paper – and its senior editor specifically – was out to get him, the goal was to make the price so high that the Vanguard would be forced to back off. But we didn’t, and in early 1981, on the verge of a remarkable mayoral election, discovery and depositions were pending. 

     Shortly after that vote the case was quietly dropped.

     Concerned about the power and danger of covert operations and perception management, I had turned my focus to the intelligence community and threats to civil liberties, publishing investigative pieces and speaking at conferences and protests. After the post-Watergate revelations of the mid-1970s Congress moved briefly toward defining a set of standards. By the time the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was passed in 1978, however, the mood was already shifting back toward broadening the powers of the FBI and CIA.

     Fearing that Supreme Court decisions would be even more damaging to individual rights than congressional actions many civil libertarians supported FISA, which set up a “secret court” to handle wiretap warrants. Emboldened by this legislative victory, the FBI and CIA next sought to legitimize the type of covert activities that had provoked protest only a few years before.

     Most of Congress was already eager to liberate the intelligence agencies, which claimed that their covert programs had been hamstrung by Watergate era rules and congressional oversight. Thus, politicians looked away when the CIA or FBI didn't completely notify Congress about their operations. A chance to blow the whistle finally emerged in early 1980, just days before the launch of the US Census.

     Sometimes it takes only a single document – and good timing – to shake things up. In this case it was an FBI report about the surveillance of a nurse practitioner named Jed Lowy. Like many people, Lowy just happened to be in the “wrong place” at the wrong time. In his case, the place was a so-called Vermont “commune” the bureau considered a gathering spot for “extremists.” The difference was that Lowy obtained his FBI file via the Freedom of Information Act and shared it.

     One entry in the file revealed that the bureau was trying to identify the driver of a Blue 1970 Volkswagen, which had “previously been observed at New Left locations in Vermont.” The Albany FBI office contacted its Newark, New Jersey counterpart and discovered that the car belonged to a 53-year-old man, Lowy’s father. A search was initiated to see who might be driving it.

     The article I wrote for the Vanguard, published on April 4, 1980, charged the bureau with misusing the US Census. The evidence was a document that said the following: “A (deleted) to (deleted) the (deleted) of a spot check for the 1970 census resulted in a (deleted) with the (deleted) from whom the following was obtained.”

     Not much to go on. But in a letter to Lowy the Bureau explained that the deleted portions referred to other people whose privacy rights were being protected and the investigative techniques that had been used. Once they had Lowy’s name, they had zeroed in on him through the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles and continued investigating for another six months. Despite the absence of any evidence they kept at it because of an alleged association with the Fresh Ground Coffee House, “a known contact point for extremist(sic) and associated with the Red Mountain Green Commune.”

     When I contacted the FBI, an agent in Washington, DC office issued the standard denial: “The FBI does not utilize census information. Period.” Once I read portions of the memo, however, he decided to get back to me. In a follow up call, the new line was that he wasn’t “at liberty to discuss documents that the FBI has.” He didn’t repeat the denial. We had struck a nerve.

     The story created an immediate sensation, shooting across the country within hours. Vermont’s congressional delegation said the repercussions could be serious and promised to investigate. By the weekend, our scoop was a national sensation and Lowy was being interviewed on the CBS Evening News. A week after the initial story, the FBI acknowledged that, although census information hadn’t been used, an agent had indeed posed as a census worker.

     The technique, a bureau spokesman told the New York Times, was known as “pretext interviews,” in which agents assume false identities. But he added that new FBI guidelines said agents shouldn’t pose as representatives of other Federal agencies without the consent of that agency. That, of course, raised the question of what the Census Bureau actually knew. Unfortunately, the investigation never got that far.

     Instead, the FBI released a less deleted version of the memo. What it revealed was that a “pretext call” – the first deleted phrase – to the Lowy home had “resulted in a conversation with the maid…” In other words, an FBI agent had posed as a census worker to find out more about a 30-year-old health worker who had merely visited a “commune.” FBI Director William Webster protested that the technique was legal – but added that all field offices had been told not to do it.

     Attorney General Ben Civiletti was a more candid. In a letter to US Senator Patrick Leahy, he said the FBI knew “it is wrong for an FBI agent to pose as a representative of the Bureau of the Census for any reason,” and had so informed its special agents. Webster subsequently put the revised policy on paper: the pretext of being a census worker shouldn’t be used, or even requested.

     What we never learned was whether it was an isolated occurrence or a standard procedure. Nevertheless, a small crack had been made in the covert iceberg. An alternative newspaper had broken through the “Washington consensus” to challenge the intelligence community. It wouldn’t be the last time.

Next: The Tipping Point

Total Exposure (or, how we gave up privacy and learned to love Big Brother)

Part Three of The Great Free Speech Robbery

In June 2000, a blue-ribbon US congressional commission on terrorism released some recommendations that made civil libertarians cringe. In order to prevent possible terrorist attacks, said the panel, which included a former CIA director and the Army general who investigated a 1996 attack on US troops in Saudi Arabia, restrictions on FBI wiretapping should be loosened and surveillance of foreign students should be increased. At the time, even the conservative Lincoln Legal Foundation said that the cure was "worse than the disease," arguing that such threats didn't warrant a suspension of constitutional rights.
     Most people barely noticed the dispute. But even if they had, even a year before 9/11 it was unlikely that too many would have expressed concern about the implications of more wiretapping or spying on students accused of no crimes. After all, the problem was terrorism.
     Despite the US preoccupation with individual privacy, surveillance of everyday life had already become so commonplace that it was difficult to resist such government intrusions. Video cameras perched around banks, airports, hospitals, ATMs, stores, freeways, and building lobbies and elevators. In the US and Europe, people often felt safer with cameras observing streets and parking lots. Some consumers did object to the collection of information on shopping preferences by Web sites and stores, yet most accepted it as a relatively harmless trade-off.
     According to Bill Gates, within a few years, computers would be able to inexpensively scan video records to find a particular person or activity. In his 2000 book, The Road Ahead, Gates envisioned (but didn’t directly recommend) a camera on every streetlight someday. "What today seems like digital Big Brother might one day become the norm if the alternative is being left to the mercy of terrorists or criminals," he wrote. In the future, Gates suggested, many people would choose to lead "a documented life," keeping an audio, written, and even video record of their everyday activities on a wallet PC.
     Once considered a threatening intrusion, surveillance has also become a form of entertainment. Using the Internet and video cameras, people proudly put their private lives online. Meanwhile, thousands line up to be watched by cameras (and a TV audience) 24 hours a day. On countless "reality" TV shows, contestants willingly surrender their privacy in the hope of winning (or in the case of many “celebrities,” recapturing) fame or fortune. Although such programs occasionally provide some instructive insights into group behavior, they also promote voyeurism, while indirectly undermining objections to other forms of surveillance.
     In the past, concerns about privacy centered on the government's activities. Thus, the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution provided protection against "unreasonable searches and seizures" by the State, and US Supreme Court rulings have since suggested that there may be a constitutional right to privacy from government invasions. But there is no protection so far from the new technologies, and the dramatic expansion of private surveillance, along with a public embrace of "big brother" to guard against crime or provide amusement, make it harder to impose restrictions.
     The most problematic issue isn't conventional surveillance – a bugging device installed with a warrant or a cop with a camera – but rather the indiscriminate use of video and other tools, along with the implications for manipulation of human behavior. Clearly, people who know they are, or may be, watched end up acting differently. Through a combination of design and commercial accident, businesses are grafting surveillance to Skinnerian theory, creating a powerful new form of conditioning. In the name of efficiency, employers use cameras and PC tracking programs to monitor and mold employees. In the name of entertainment, TV puts people in a competitive goldfish bowl, promoting the idea that being totally exposed is a privilege and, with winning behavior, can lead to financial reward or at least celebrity.
     For people already suffering from narcissism (a social epidemic whose symptoms include addiction to vicarious, mediated experiences, fear of dependence and aging, and unsatisfied cravings), a life of total exposure can become a prescription for more alienation and a cynical detachment from reality. Traditionally, the narcissist has been viewed as the "beautiful person" who can relate only to his or her own image. However, the contemporary definition also includes the characteristics already mentioned, as well as dependence on the warmth provided by others, a sense of inner emptiness, and boundless repressed rage.
     Narcissists can be pseudo-intellectuals or calculating seducers. Often, they are also fascinated with celebrities. Yet, even though such frustrated climbers tend to seek out the famous, they are often subsequently compelled to destroy their fantasy figures. If this was merely a description of a few "sick" individuals we might find some comfort. But patterns of narcissism affect millions and are reinforced daily. Perhaps most disquieting, the narcissistic personality is ideally suited for positions of power. Be warned: a narcissistic leader will sell him- or herself to win at any price.
     Selling oneself has become a form of work in our mediated world, and success often rests on the ability to project "personality" and/or an attractive image. Self-promotion also meshes neatly with an idealization of powerful personalities who represent what the narcissist seeks. Narcissists identify with winners out of their fear of being losers. Objects of hero worship tend to give meaning to the otherwise unanchored lives of society's emotional casualties. Yet mixed with idealization is an urge to degrade the object of one's admiration, sparked when the narcissist's hero ultimately disappoints. This desperate urge, intensified by the machinery of mass promotion, can turn even assassination into a form of spectacle.
     In such an environment, the knowledge that intelligence agencies in the US, England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand operate a cooperative electronic surveillance system that can monitor almost all the world's communication barely registers as a problem. After all, we are all being watched some of the time anyway. The more "spying" we learn about, or participate in, the less unusual or disturbing it seems to become.
     Being watched almost constantly may provide a superficial sense of security, and watching others may be titillating and fun. But it also can undermine the impulse to act authentically, while numbing both the watcher and watched to the hidden threats posed to their freedom and healthy development. Hopefully, once the price of the "documented life" becomes better understood, those will no longer be tradeoffs most people choose to make.

Next: Merger Madness
(Total Exposure originally posted 3/9/09)

Info Insecurity: It Only Takes a Pretext

As Census forms reached homes across the country in 2010, some people were being approached by scam artists disguising themselves as Census workers. What they were after, in most cases, was personal information like Social Security numbers, work history and home values, baseline data for possible identity theft.
     But others are more afraid of what the government might do with all the information it collects. Some groups, for example, worry that the Patriot Act or other laws allow officials to share information from other agencies with law enforcement authorities. The response from the Justice Department, on the Census at least, is “absolutely not.” On the contrary, officials note, Census information helps minority communities and leads to better enforcement of civil rights laws.
     The basic message has been that, despite anti-government anger and free-range paranoia, there’s really nothing to fear. The authorities and most media assure the public that, by law, Census information can’t be shared with any other government agency, including the FBI. Case closed, right? And yet, there are possible legal loopholes, as well as evidence that, in the past at least, collecting Census information has been used as a pretext for government spying.
     Perhaps the most egregious abuse occurred during World War II. Census data was brought to the White House -- with the approval of FDR -- and mined for information on which West Coast homes had Japanese occupants.  This information was then  shared with the military, which used it to round up tens of thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry for indefinite  confinement.
     To understand how the FBI could exploit the Census, let’s go back to another time when Congress was eager to liberate intelligence agencies. After the post-Watergate revelations of the mid-1970s, lawmakers had moved briefly toward defining standards for covert operations. By the time the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was passed in 1978, however, the mood was shifting back toward broadening the powers of the FBI and CIA.
     Congress was responding to complaints that covert programs had been hamstrung by new rules and congressional oversight. Thus, they looked away when the CIA or FBI didn't completely notify Congress about their operations. An infamous case in point was the “secret” war launched in Afghanistan – as it turns out, before the Soviet Union invaded. Nevertheless, many civil libertarians feared that Supreme Court decisions could be even more damaging than congressional action (or inaction). As a result, they supported FISA, which set up a secret court to handle wiretap warrants – the same court that the Bush administration decided to sidestep in its “war on terror.” Emboldened by this win, the FBI and CIA next pushed for legislation to legitimize the kind of covert activities that had provoked protest just a few years before.
     A glimpse of how the FBI operated – and how the Census was involved – emerged in early 1980, just days before the launch of that decade’s count. Sometimes it takes only one document to tell a larger story. In this case it was an FBI report about the surveillance of a nurse practitioner in Vermont.
     Like many people, Jed Lowy just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In his case, the place was a so-called “commune” that the Bureau considered a gathering spot for “extremists.” The difference was that Lowy obtained his FBI file via the Freedom of Information Act and then shared it with me.
     One entry in the file revealed that the Bureau was trying to identify the driver of a Blue 1970 Volkswagen, which had “previously been observed at New Left locations in Vermont.” The Albany FBI office contacted its Newark, New Jersey counterpart and discovered that the car belonged to a 53-year-old man, Lowy’s father. A search was initiated to see who might be driving it.
     The article I wrote for Vermont’s alternative weekly, The Vanguard Press, published on April 4, 1980, charged the bureau with misusing the US Census. The evidence was a document that said the following: “A (deleted) to (deleted) the (deleted) of a spot check for the 1970 census resulted in a (deleted) with the (deleted) from whom the following was obtained.”
     Not much to go on. But in a letter to Lowy the Bureau explained that the deleted portions referred to other people whose privacy rights were being protected and the investigative techniques that had been used. Once they had Lowy’s name, they zeroed in on him through the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles and continued investigating for another six months. Despite the lack of any evidence of involvement with “extremists,” they kept at it because of an alleged association with the Fresh Ground Coffee House, “a known contact point for extremist(sic) and associated with the Red Mountain Green Commune.”
     When I contacted the FBI, an agent in Washington, DC office issued the standard denial: “The FBI does not utilize census information. Period.” Once I read portions of the memo, however, he decided to get back to me. In a follow up call, the new line was that he wasn’t “at liberty to discuss documents that the FBI has.”
     He didn’t repeat the denial. We had apparently struck a nerve.

     The story created a national sensation. Vermont’s congressional delegation said the repercussions could be serious and promised to investigate. Within days, Lowy was being interviewed on the CBS Evening News. A week after the initial story, the FBI finally acknowledged that, although census information hadn’t been used, an agent had indeed posed as a census worker.\
     The technique, a bureau spokesman told The New York Times, was known as “pretext interviews,” in which agents assume false identities. But, he added, new FBI guidelines said that agents shouldn’t pose as representatives of other Federal agencies without the consent of that agency. That, of course, raised the question of what the Census Bureau knew. Unfortunately, the investigation never went that far.
     Instead, the FBI released a less deleted version of the memo. What it revealed was that a “pretext call” – the first deleted phrase – to the Lowy home had “resulted in a conversation with the maid…” In other words, the FBI agent had posed as a census worker to find out more about a 30-year-old health worker who had merely visited a “commune.” FBI Director William Webster quickly protested that the technique was legal – but all field offices had been told not to do it.
     Attorney General Ben Civiletti was a bit more candid. In a letter to US Senator Patrick Leahy, he said the FBI knew “it is wrong for an FBI agent to pose as a representative of the Bureau of the Census for any reason,” and had so informed its special agents. Webster subsequently put the revised policy on paper: the pretext of being a census employee shouldn’t be used, or even be requested.
     Nevertheless, the public never learned whether this was an isolated occurrence or a standard procedure. And that, unfortunately, raises a nagging question. Despite any assurances, how certain are we that Census information is never used by other parts of the government?
     Given the many high-tech ways that information can be gathered these days, a visit or “pretext” phone call by a fake Census worker sounds a bit labor intensive and therefore pretty unlikely. On the other hand, the Patriot Act does leave the basic issue unresolved. Section 215 of the law has made it much easier to gain access to records being held by a third party. Under the law, the FBI can force doctors, libraries, bookstores, universities, and Internet service providers to turn over information. All the Bureau needs to do is claim that the request is related to an ongoing terrorism or foreign intelligence investigation. Plus, if that happens the organization turning over the information can’t tell anyone. In other words, if Census information was being used, it would have to remain secret.
     To assuage fears, the Justice Department has reassured the Asian Pacific, Black, and Hispanic caucuses in Congress that Section 215 doesn’t override federal statutes guaranteeing the confidentiality of Census data. "If Congress intended to override these protections," wrote Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich, "it would say so clearly and explicitly."
     In addition, amendments to FISA make it necessary to get approval from a top official at either the FBI or CIA when sensitive records are being sought. In short, protections have been increased. Still, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to get Census data using Section 215. As the US Supreme Court noted in St. Regis Paper v. United States, confidentiality requirements are only binding on specific covered individuals. In other words, census records themselves aren’t off limits, as long as the government can get them from a “non-covered” individual.
     Is Census information completely confidential? It’s hard to say. But given the general erosion of privacy rights and the fact that the “war on terror” remains a powerful pretext for all manner of mischief, it’s not a stretch to think that even Census records aren’t completely protected, especially if they can be gotten from a source other than the “designated” officials.
     There’s even a name for this – Plausible Deniability. That’s when someone at the top allows an action to be taken by a third party, often a person lower on the chain of command and also less accessible. If something goes wrong, the higher up can deny any knowledge of or connection to what happened.
     Not coincidentally, the term was coined by CIA Director Allen Dulles, and first came into public use during post Watergate investigations of intelligence agency abuses. You never know, with a timely pretext it could be back.

Fragile Freedom in the Big Apple

     In order to see the 9/11 Memorial in lower Manhattan you must first remove your belt and anything metal, pass through airport-level security, and show your ticket at six separate check points. After making it past all this on a sunny afternoon I did not feel especially free by the time I entered the site.

     Still, the Memorial can provoke powerful emotions that tend to eclipse the oppressive experience of being processed, prodded and examined before acceptance. Standing in the wide court surrounding the two pools, built on the same spots where the Twin Towers stood, you cannot help sensing what is missing. Still water circulates below the names of victims, each die-cut into bronze, and then descends the thirty-foot waterfall into a void. 

     The guide touts it as the largest water cascade in North America.

     

     Personally, I was never a fan of the World Trade Center. Growing up in New York before the towers went up, I found them unwelcome ego-additions to the skyline that projected Rockefeller power. Returning decades later, however, the space finally feels like it belongs to everyone who visits.

    People stroll slowly around the large square pools, often stopping when they find a familiar name or group of first responders. School classes search for people on electronic directories. Others sit on stone benches to reflect. Eventually the site will include a museum, set to open this fall, office and retail space, and more than 400 newly planted trees.

   

     At the moment the surrounding area is a loud and crowded construction site as work proceeds on 1 World Trade Center and other commercial buildings. Large TV screens hawking products, plays and films have been mounted onto subway entrances to lure tourists visiting the memorial. It is also a security zone, watched from cameras and vigilantly patrolled by cops and Memorial staff.

     You get a sense that if someone spoke too loudly or uttered any “inappropriate” thought it would take only seconds before an armed team descended and removed them. It’s certainly possible that someone might want to attack such a monument. But doesn’t the same go for many other sites?     

     According to a message from Mayor Bloomberg, printed in the official guide, the 9/11 Memorial is supposed to act as both a reminder of loss and a symbol of hope for the future. As a reminder, it succeeds – in both intentional and unintended ways. But as a vision of the future this part of Manhattan currently suggests a more tightly regulated society, one where you are free to mourn -- after submitting to strict authority in order to qualify -- but probably not to question, criticize or protest.

     Like Bloomberg, Memorial and Museum President Joe Daniels calls it a reminder – of “what we have endured” and “our ability to come together in the wake of tragedy.” That is clearly true. But visiting also points to some of what has been lost or surrendered since the attacks more than a decade ago. Daniels adds that the recent official opening marked “a new chapter in the history of New York City and the United States.” 

     At this point it’s still hard to tell how the chapter will end.