Radical Terrorist Becomes Scholar and Heroine

David Gilbert  

If you wait long enough, anything is possible on Broadway or in Hollywood. Yesterday’s villain can become tomorrow’s hero or in the case of Kathy Boudin, former member of the domestic terrorist group the Weather Underground and convicted murderer, a heroine.

Boudin,  sentenced to a life term in New York State  for the shooting deaths of two policemen, Edward O’Grady and Waverly Brown as well as Brinks security guard Peter Paige was paroled in 2003 after serving twenty two years in prison for the three homicides.  The officers were killed in a shootout with members of the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army after a failed bank robbery in 1981.  Boudin minimized her role in the slayings by simply saying she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Yet the groups that she was involved with utilized explosives and automatic weapons to destroy property, take lives, and instill fear in ordinary citizens through violence.  If that isn’t terrorism, I don’t know what is.
Today we read that Ms. Boudin has been quite active since her parole.   She has been working as an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of Social Work and was recently awarded the Sheinberg Scholar-in-Residence at NYU Law School.  And if being honored as a scholar was not enough, she is to receive accolades as a heroine in Robert Redford’s soon to be released movie, “The Company You Keep”  based on the activities on Boudin and her former husband David Gilbert, currently serving three life sentences in Auburn State Prison for his role in the shooting deaths of O’Grady, Brown, and Paige.  David has also received some portion of fame with his book,
“No Surrender” an unrepentant account of his life as a terrorist.  David is also actively involved in several radical organizations including Viva Palestina, even while incarcerated.  Could release be just around the corner for him?  Unfortunately he does not see the Parole Board until 2056 when he will be 112 years old.

Their son, Chesa Boudin, who was left at the babysitter’s while they went off to steal and kill was raised by former Weather Underground members Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn.  Chesa went on to become a Yale grad and a Rhodes Scholar while the nine children left behind  struggled to make their way in this world without the benefit of  a father taken by the violence of domestic terrorism.

No PR firm in the world could have scripted a better image conversion than the makeover given Ms. Boudin.  We are told she is an advocate for AIDS patients and adult education.  Her students at Columbia are said to adore her, a regular Mother Teresa to ex-cons and their families as they seek to reenter society.

She was a daughter of privilege who fell from grace but has now returned to bless us with her talents.

But the blood on her hands does not wash off that easily, nor does the stained ground where her victims fell. Twenty two years for three lives and now a heroine.  The price of fame may have come cheap to her, but the average citizen is not fooled by the glitter

New Books in Terrorism & Organized Crime Review

NBN Brisbane AU interviews author 

by MARK LAUCHS on MARCH 28, 2013

View on Amazon

Patrick Dunleavy is the author of The Fertile Soil of Jihad: Terrorism’s Prison Connection (Potomac Books, 2011). He provides us with a fascinating insight into the radicalization process within the prison system. This is a sensitive topic but Dunleavy does not provide a political commentary on radicalization or Islam but rather acknowledges that the process can occur and gives us a detailed recounting of one such group within the New York Correctional system. He discusses a few key characters and how they ended up in prison and the circumstances that led to their participation in radical thought. The most interesting parts of the book for me were the methods of prison life that aided the process; the ability to communicate with the outside world and the massaging of internal security routines to allow interaction and coordination with others inside the system. This is not a morality play, but rather a description of a process. We can certainly learn a lot through books such as these that reduce our naivety about the ingenuity of prison inmates who have a lot of time to think and experiment with their immediate environment. Radicalization is a serious issue but for me this was a book more about the world of incarceration than terrorism.

listen to interview...

Solitary Confinement is not Torture

“...and the winner is...”When those words were uttered at the Academy Awards sunday, we knew it would not be, “Zero Dark Thirty” in part due to the increasing criticism that the film, although critically acclaimed,  condoned the torturing of terrorists after their initial capture.

Whether the methods used were enhanced interrogation techniques necessary for the prevention of future attacks, or some barbaric dehumanizing treatment of wayward souls

is the questioned much debated in the public forum with little agreement as to a solution that is

both effective and humane.  Those conversations take place at the water cooler and in the halls of Congress stimulating a wide range of responses.

The cry going forth on one side often warns that if we torture,  we will become like the terrorist, reflecting the admonition of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche; “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”

And make no mistake about it, those who fly planes into buildings or encourage others to blow themselves up as a service to god, are in fact monsters.  They care not for the innocent.

What then, should we coddle them, smother them with our kindness and hope that they will 

change.  Those that think that may be the most naive.  

Others respond rather callously ; “kill them all and let God sort them out.”

Neither position is realistically an effective means of dealing with the issue.

What is a viable solution for captured and convicted terrorists is solitary confinement, an often enigmatic technique used by prison administrators in the daily operation of correctional systems.

It is perhaps the most misunderstood treatment.  Conjuring up visions of Alexander Dumas’ “The Man in the Iron Mask”  or Steve McQueen’s portrayal of Henri “Papillion” Charriere in the French Penal Colony of Devils Island.  We see individuals living in squalor, in dark dungeons, forced to subsist on a diet of cockroaches, spiders and other creeping creatures, going mad with 

the absence of another human being to talk to.  Is this an accurate description?

George Will, whom I admire as a gifted and eloquent locutioner and journalist, got it wrong in his recent article on the subject of solitary confinement.  He wrote that solitary confinement is cruel and unusual punishment, a form of torture.  He cited the Supreme Court case of James J Medley, a convicted murder who was kept in solitary confinement awaiting execution in 1890 in Colorado.  

This was the definition of  solitary confinement then; “...and no person shall be allowed access to said convict, except his attendants, counsel, physician, a spiritual adviser of his own selection, and members of his family,”.   Justice Bradley in writing the opinion expressed his view that these conditions of confinement for Medley were a form of torture.  But there was not unanimous agreement on the issue.  In fact the dissenting judge in the case,  J Brewer, went on to say;  ”it seems a misnomer to call this 'solitary confinement,' in the harsh sense in which this phrase is sometimes used. All that is meant is that a condemned murderer shall not be permitted to hold anything like a public reception...”

And in part because of the disagreement of whether or not solitary confinement was torture, a convicted murder was set free.

And now one hundred and twenty three years later, we’re still trying to come to grips with the issue.

In modern correctional settings, solitary confinement is not social deprivation.  It is a managed social setting controlled not by the criminal or in this case the terrorist, but by prison administrators following generally accepted standards.  And those conditions are anything but torture.

You can read the Bureau of Prisons guidelines

 for operating a Special Housing Unit, which by the way is the proper name for those sections of a prison where inmates, who are a threat to other inmates or the general public, are held.   On the statewide level many correctional agencies follow the guidelines set forth by the American Correctional Association for the operation of these special units.  I can tell you as one who has both worked in, and toured these units, the 

inmates residing in them are not living in solitude.  They have access to library services for reading material.  They are served a wholesome and nutritious diet, not swill. They are visited daily by security staff, medical staff, counseling staff, clergy, and administration staff.  They just don’t get to pick and choose who they want to see or call or socialize with.

But that in a sense is one of the purposes of prison, removal from society at large.  Prison is not supposer to be a pleasant place.  Humane yes, but enjoyable, no.  Inmates will always complain about their conditions.  In the Netherlands, where inmates have private cells with television, some would consider it torture to take away the convict’s TV for disciplinary reasons.  That type of incarceration is a far cry from life in the first  New York state prison, Auburn,  described thusly, 

“ Auburn is the oldest existing State correctional facility. It was built to relieve overcrowding at Newgate Prison in New York City and received its first inmates in 1817. The "Auburn System" included separate confinement of inmates, congregate work during the day, enforced silence, lockstep walking, striped uniforms, and the use of the lash as punishment.”

Conditions have drastically changed in the almost 200 years since and no one is suggesting a return to the “good old days.”  

What then do you do then with those who, even in the prison society, can still inflict death or destruction to others?

Those you must isolate even from the general prison population.

Is that wrong?  No.  Is there a danger posed by allowing terrorists in prison to move about within the confines of the wall as they will?  Emphatically yes!

This week we remember the twentieth anniversary of the first World Trade Center Bombing which killed six and injured more than one thousand.  One of the architects of that heinous crime

was an inmate in Attica State Prison, El Sayiid Nosair.  In 2004 Kevin James, an inmate in California’s New Folsom Prison, not only formed a terrorist group, Jam’iyyat Ul-Islam, but oversaw the operation of the group, which included plots to attack US military installations, from his prison cell.  Both individuals cited used the privileges afforded them in the general prison population to reach beyond the walls and harm others.

Others have , as in the case of inmate Abdel Zaben, a member of Hamas who had sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden, and was serving time in a New York prison for kidnapping, used their stature in the prison community to recruit others to the cause.

A terrorist is not rendered harmless when captured or confined.  Where he can he will act, when he can’t he will influence.  For the true jihadist the war doesn’t end when captured.

Initially it was thought that placing special conditions of confinement or Strict Administrative Measures (SAMs) as they are officially called would be an effective way of neutralizing 

incarcerated terrorists.   That has been challenged in recent years in the courts.  Recently John Walker Lindh won a case against the Bureau of Prisons by challenging his conditions of confinement when he requested to meet five times a day with other radical islamic inmates.

Khalfan Khamis Mohamed,convicted in the 1998 bombing of the American Embassy in

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, currently serving a life sentence in the Supermax Prison in Florence, Colorado, has file a writ to be restored to the general prison population saying that he has changed in the 15 years of incarceration and is no longer a threat.  What he fails to mention in his brief filed in federal court is that in 2000 while in the Metropolitan Correctional Center awaiting trial, he and his co-defendant Mamdouh Mahmud Salim brutally assaulted Correction Officer Louis Pepe with a jailhouse shank and scalding hot liquid causing a permanent brain injury to the guard.  No longer a threat?  I think not.  

And now Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center as well as the Bojinka plot to blow up eleven commercial airlines with passengers, in custody since 1995 has petitioned the federal court to be released from solitary confinement and restore certain

prison privileges that were taken away.

  This is the same individual whom the sentencing Judge Kevin Duffy described as “"an apostle of evil" and "a virus that must be locked away."   Viruses we quarantine until there is a cure.  I for one still believe  that Ramzi and his uncle Khalid Sheik Mohammad, mastermind of the 9-11 attacks, still pose a threat to the health of this nation.  And when contemplating how to effectively deal with captured terrorists I’m reminded not of the words of Nietzsche, but of a line in a Tom Waits song, “you gotta keep the devil down in the hole.”

Solitary Confinement is not torture.  It is an effective management tool for dealing with incarcerated terrorists.
Washington Times 2013

Solitary Confinement is not Torture

Forgetting the Hero and Protecting the Terrorist's Rights, Court Rules in Favor of the Taliban

Johnny Micheal Spann
killed during prison riot
Afghanistan - 2001 

John Walker Lindh
captured in Afghanistan
2001

    U.S. District Court rules in favor of the Taliban.  A federal district judge, Jane Magnus-Stinson ruled that the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act applies even to convicted terrorists in prison.  John Walker Lindh, also known as "The American Taliban" sued the Federal Bureau of Prisons for the right to congregate with other Islamic terrorists in the Communications Management Unit of the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI), in Terre Haute, Indiana.  Lindh who was captured in 2001 fighting alongside Taliban members in Afghanistan is serving a twenty year sentence for collaboration with the terrorist organization in fighting against U.S. forces.

Judge Stinson overlooks the fact that he is a terrorist and that when he was initially held in a military prison near Mazār-e Sharī in Afghanistan a riot broke out and CIA officer Johnny "Micheal" Spann was killed by the inmates. The uprising began on the same day Spann had conducted an interview of Lindh.  Spann,  the first American to die in Afghanistan,  was posthumously awarded the Intelligence Star and the Exceptional Service Medallion, the equivalent of the U.S. military's Silver Star.  He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

The Judge's description of John Walker Lindh is; [he is] "a low security prisoner who wishes to engage in a brief communal activity with other inmates".  That makes him appear to be docile, socially adept, and non-threatening. That narrative almost makes you want to invite him home for coffee.

Why is it that the average citizen can see this decision as insanity and yet the ACLU and the other inmate rights advocates do not?

The Court it seems cannot discern between a genuine rehabilitation and someone who has become "jail-wise" after more than ten years in the system.
 Prison officials and security experts must be given the leeway to administer measures which prevent convicted terrorists from acting again.  Anything less would be an insult to the memory of those who gave their lives in the fight against terrorism.

Egypt & the Arab Spring: Not Exactly a 1776 Moment

U.S. Constitutional Convention

If a picture paints a thousand words, then there can be no greater illustration to show the contrast between what took place in much of the Arab world two years ago and the birth of democracy in the United States than these two pictures .  The one is Howard Chandler Christy’s painting of the signing of the Constitution in Philadelphia.  The other is of tanks and barbed wire surrounding the presidential palace in Cairo following the passing of the constitutional referendum in Egypt.

Egyptian Presidential Palace

The one hangs in the Capitol building, the other was beamed across the world by the social media. What those images denote is the stark reality that is often overlooked by our current leaders.  Totalitarianism relies on the barrel of a gun and democracy on the power of the word, freedom.
What Egyptian President Morisi did  can be described in no other way.  He amassed power to himself under the guise of protecting the nation and pushing through a constitution that fit the radical Islamist agenda.  After massive demonstrations in Tahrir Square by non-Islamist Egyptians, he rescinded part of the order giving him supreme authority, yet the dye had already been cast as to how he would rule in the future.  On Monday he imposed martial law on the country and gave the military authority to arrest civilians who would oppose the passing of the constitutional referendum.  On Tuesday massive demonstrations were held by those opposed to the constitutional referendum vote scheduled for this Saturday.  President Morsi’s response was to brand those who demonstrated as enemies of the state, subversives and foreign conspirators, going so far as to use the state run TV station in getting his message out.  A technique that was described by Al Jazeera news as “borrowing a page out of (former) President Muburak’s playbook”.
What the outcome will be in Egypt remains to be seen, perhaps the will of the people will prevail and true democracy will take root.  And then again it may be that the radical Islamists who have hijacked the movement will force the will of Allah on all the people if not by the ballot then by the sword.

And lest we should think that this was an isolated incident in the Middle East or as some  have described events in that area as “a bump in the road” we need only to look at what is going on in  countries like Libya and Syria as to what the Arab Spring has produced.

In Libya we’ve had the Benghazi incident, led by a radical Islamic organization that resulted in the death of four Americans.  New reports now out on the situation there reveal that the US permitted Qatar to ship weapons to an Al Qaeda affiliate leading the opposition in the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.  The investigation into the killing of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, diplomat Sean Smith, and former Navy Seals Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods is being stalled because Libyan authorities fear taking on the radical Islamic militia in control of that section of the country.

In Syria we are finding out that the strongest, best trained Assad opposition leaders there are in fact members of the Nusra Front, an off shoot of Al Qaeda in Iraqi (AQI).

If and when Bashar al Assad is finally removed from power there is the possibility of another Afghanistan type country, fraught with sectarian violence and a Taliban like government that again forces the will of Allah on the people with the base of the sword.

The failure of Western diplomats, including the United States to understand what is taking place in the Middle East because of some giddy hope or naïveté  for all countries to be like ours is a sure road to failure in promoting democracy. The birth of democracy does indeed begin with a cry for freedom and it may need be paid for in some measure by the shedding of blood, but it must be guarded against  hijacking by pseudo democratic movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood.