Shock of the Old

Tinker-Salas Incident: FBI apologizes for Deppity Dawgs

Another email from the President:

To the Pomona College Community:

This afternoon, I received a phone call from the Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles Field Office of the FBI, who apologized for any disruption caused on our campus by the visit of two members of the Joint Task Force on Terrorism to Professor Miguel Tinker Salas's office on Wednesday. He assured me that no intimidation was intended and that he regretted that the timing and location of the interview request suggested otherwise.

A short time later, the FBI's Los Angeles Office released the attached public statement. There has been a great deal of media interest in these events, and I believe that these latest developments may be covered by several news channels this evening or this weekend.

We are grateful to all of you who have helped bring about this apology by virtue of your communications with professional colleagues and professional associations across the country. I am very sorry that our colleague was subjected to this treatment, and I'm sure you join me in hoping that we will not have a repetition of this kind of incident in the future.

David Oxtoby Download FBIStatement.DOC

***
Whether the visit from Deppity Dawg Pseudo-Feds was occasioned by Miguel Tinker-Salas' recent talk about Venezuela, or whether it was pure coinkidink, the alleged intimidating behavior of the officers must be taken in the context of a continuum of post-Constitutional, post-9/11 weirdness: what Monty Python once called (in a now wistfully comic context) "the Violence Inherent in the System." As my friend J notes:

I have to say I am a little jealous of the person who gets paid to sit through lectures, take notes on suspicious language / talk and then submit lengthy memos to superiors on suspicious professors and non-profits.  Think of it, government benefits, 9 to 5 hours, use of a g-car, and one gets to go undercover and wear dreads, comfortable clothing and a large backpack.  Life could be worse.

As for the chuckleheads that showed up at the professor's door, I would agree with vemos and say that TV programs like “24,” “numbers,” and “CSI: LA County Counterterrorism” have serious warped the perceptions of these puesdo-G men to make them think that at every 7-11 or library cube lurks a plot to destroy Tinsletown.

There is an element of fantasy and play acting in the alleged behavior of the pseudo-feds. But they are inhabiting their own episode of 24, with guns strapped to their belts and badges in their wallets. So the macho fantasy can flow seamlessly into the very real Violence Inherent in the System - from the obscene spectacle of Iraq to the eye-rollingly Kafka-esque browbeating of Tinker-Salas.

How's that for an(other) unsupportable grand mini-narrative? It's worth every penny you paid, as Meg notes.

 

** Update 11 Mar 8:42 AM

LA Times: Story March 11, 2006

Huff Post Update: John Seery claims a little too much credit for the Huff Post here, I think. But the bloggability of this made it a story much faster than it would have been otherwise. Update March 11, 06

Tinker-Salas vs. the Pseudo-Feds, kapitel zwei

The Tinker-Salas Incident is becoming an eminently bloggable moment. A fellow Pomona faculty blogs at the Huffington Post, pointing out that MTS has been a media source for comment on the Bush Admin's hostile posture toward Chavez and Venezuela (which I came by way of Planned Obsolescence, an academic über-bloggerista).

Here also are the hits from Google's blog crawler.

 

This email exchange was occasioned by the tale:

From: MMD<md@stevieworld.com>
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 08:46:26 -0800
To: vemosmcvemos@shockoftheold.com
Cc: J <jm@paperboy.net>, AK <ak@ummagumma.edu>, [et al.]
Subject: Mittwoch Gesellschaft

It's easy to forget why the lumiére, the Gehlehrten, and other subversives of the Enlightenment did their democratic reforming out of secret societies -- think underground raves minus all the touching.   Kant belonged to one, the Wednesday Society.  Now, there is nothing Kant hated more that people questioning the King when drawing a paycheck or pension from him -- bad manners and it makes the kids act all crazy.   But even conservative, monarchist Kant supported critique among the intellectuals in what he sweetly called, "the public sphere" -- a magic place constituted by the hippie goofiness of open exchange of ideas with an eye towards progress and, maybe, a perfect society...There's a place for critique, he insisted.  But, as tools of the state, he finger-wagged and musket-conjured, we must remember:  "Say what you want.  But, Obey!" 

Now it's, what?  "Obey all you want. But, Obey!"

This missive submissively submitted in the inevitable open,

"Anonymous" of the non-existent Wednesday Society

And in reply:

    From:       vemosmcvemos@shockoftheold.com
    Subject:     Re: Mittwoch Gesellschaft, treffen sie die Pseudo-Feds an!
    Date:     March 10, 2006 10:05:51 PST
    To:      MMD
    Cc:       [the rest]
or - Kant hadn't seen nothing yet. Now that we apparently have both the technology and the technocracy (i.e. low-level govt. stoolies with enough time to sit through a conference on Latin America, dutifully take notes on a not famous but solid professor from Pomona, and drop a dime on him to the LA County Sheriff's Dept. based on the content of his speech) all of the great authoritarian dreams of Full Surveillance, on-demand Interrogation, and Constitution-free and publicly accepted Torture Zones are finally here-- thanks also to movies, "24," and the new "Battlestar Galactica" for smoothing the zeitgeist in the wake of Abu Gharib. . . Or were the Abu Gharib photos leaked deliberately? They tested well with white males 19-55 in Red States. I mean really, has the CIA never heard of digital cameras and cam-phones?

And finally, in a kind of correction, Tinker-Salas did in fact speak on Venezuela before the Incident, but it was not directly on US policy toward Venezuela. . . Nevertheless, it doesn't negate the suspicious air of Surveillance and Interrogation that pervades this troubling story.

Soon Appearing on the O'Reilly Factor . . .

The President of the lovely little liberal arts college where I work (not where I teach) sent this email to everyone:

To the Pomona College community:

On Tuesday, March 7, Miguel Tinker Salas, Arango Professor of Latin American History and Chicano Studies, was visited in his Pearsons Hall office by two men from the Los Angeles County Sheriff/FBI Joint Task Force on Terrorism. To avoid rumors, I wanted the Pomona College community to be aware of the facts.

The agents asked Professor Tinker Salas a number of personal questions as well as questions about the Venezuelan government and the Venezuelan community in the U.S. During the meeting, they told him that he was not a subject of investigation. The tone and content of the questioning, however, troubled him deeply. He was also troubled by the fact that the agents reportedly questioned some of the students outside his office while waiting to see him.

Miguel, as all of you know, is a superb Wig Award winning teacher and a fine scholar on Latin American history, politics, and culture who is sometimes asked by the news media to comment on topics related to his research, including Venezuelan politics. The College supports him and his scholarly work without reservation.

I am extremely concerned about the chilling effect this kind of intrusive government interest could have on free scholarly and political discourse. I am also concerned about the negative message it sends to students who are considering the pursuit of important areas of international study, in which they may now feel exposed to unwarranted official scrutiny.

The College is currently consulting with legal advisors about the most effective way to register a strong official protest about this intrusion into our scholarly and educational activities, and we will take appropriate action as soon as their advice is received.  We are also asking for their help in assuring that all members of the College community are fully informed about their rights and their options in such situations.

David Oxtoby

The story I got from this professor's grad student is: Miguel Tinker-Salas gives a talk last weekend in DC on US policy toward Venezuela (I'm guessing he's not pleased with it. . . ). By the following Tuesday afternoon two LA County Deputy Dawgs from West Covina masquerading [i.e. assuming the cachet of the FBI when in fact they are LAC officers] as Feds show up during his office hours, quizzing his students about him, browbeating him under the color of the authority of the "LAC Sheriff/FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force" about his knowledge of and connections to the "Venezeulan community" (he is a naturalized US citizen), whether he spends spring break with Hugo Chavez and Fidel, etc.  Interesting timing? Perhaps.
I'm leaving in names and identifying details because this will be in the Chronicle and LA Weekly soon enough. It's a far cry from the Sami Al-Arian situation, so far. Just don't answer Bill O'Reilly's phone calls.