WikiLeaks Revelations – A New “Enemies List?”

Most individuals born before 1960 will likely remember the Watergate hearings. Among the revelations coming out of those hearings was the existence of President Nixon’s “enemies list.” Individuals on that list -- that an overly paranoid Administration deemed as its enemies -- were subjected to everything from FBI investigations to extra IRS audits. The recent dump by WikiLeaks of classified documents includes some diplomatic cables between the U.S. and Japan regarding the latter nation’s whaling operations and a proposed compromise by the U.S. to continue support for Japanese whaling at a reduced level. What is troubling in the cables, however, is a discussion about targeting the organization Sea Shepard, which has been harassing Japanese whaling vessels at sea. Rather than bring open charges against Sea Shepard for any illegal activity, however, the classified cables discussed, instead, the U.S. government going after the organization’s tax-exempt status.

While Sea Shepard is widely reviled by many in the fishing fleet – not just the Japanese government – the method the two governments proposed for dealing with interference with whaling is highly troubling and smacks of the Nixon Enemies List and the tactics employed by that former President’s inner-circle. If a fisherman advocates civil disobedience to protest an unjust fishery law, is he or she now to be subjected to an IRS audit as a result? If a fishing organization, or even a conservation organization, sues the federal government for any number of bad policies, are they to lose their tax-exempt status? Recently banks and credit card companies, badly embarrassed by WikiLeaks release of classified documents, have cut-off that organization from credit card donations and other services – although companies such as VISA still provide groups such as the Ku Klux Klan a full line of services. Sadly, it appears now that the covert operations of government are not just limited to foreign enemies, but may extend to the nation’s citizens and its organizations.

For more, see the John Vidal, 6 January The Guardian article, “WikiLeaks: Secret whaling deal plotted by US and Japan,” at: www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/06/wikileaks-secret-whaling-deal.

Source: The Guardian/PCFFA