One of the most important benefits flowing from the First Amendment is the guarantee of a private citizen’s right to criticize his government, a guarantee that has been fundamental to civil rights activists and social reformers for many years.
Prior to the First Amendment, however, the idea that a citizen could speak out against his government was virtually unthinkable. For centuries, nations had been governed by monarchies where a King’s word was law and those who spoke out against the Crown were punished immediately. Critical pamphleteers had their hands cut off; printers who published material considered seditious were drawn and quartered. Short of open and bloody rebellion, the citizen had no recourse. And when the King held the loyalty of the army, such attempts were dangerous, if not suicidal.
The First Amendment provided the shield an individual American needed in order to speak up without having to suffer consequences.
Despite the guarantee of free speech, however, some individuals in modern governments still attempt to keep their activities secret. Free speech means little without free access to information.
One of the most potent weapons against government secrecy in the United States today is the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). For more than 20 years, the Church of Scientology has been an active and outspoken supporter of laws to strengthen FOIA and of those who use the Act to effectively expose government secrets.
During the late 1970s, for example, Freedom ran a continuing series which exposed how the government manipulated the media by cultivating friendly reporters as intelligence operatives, planting false news stories and squelching stories critical of the government or its officials.
In another instance, one of the longest-running series of stories to appear in Freedom was the more than two-year investigation into secret government mind control and chemical-biological warfare experiments.
Starting in the early 1950s, government intelligence services launched a program known as MK Ultra and numerous secret projects were conducted under this umbrella. Among the first were deadly mind control experiments designed to find ways to control human behavior using drugs, electroshock and brain operations.
Such experiments were intended to create the perfect spy one who could not be compromised even if tortured to death, one who would carry out any order and one who could even be programmed to murder on command. It was nothing less than the attempt to create the “Manchurian Candidate.” During the late 1970s, the Church published numerous FOIA documents exposing these secret mind control experiments.
But mind control experimentation was only one aspect of the MK Ultra program. In an effort to create new war weapons, soldiers were given powerful hallucinogenic drugs, often without their consent. These chemicals, one of which was 100 times more potent than LSD, left many physically and mentally damaged for the remainder of their lives.
Through the use of FOIA, the Church documented numerous violations of human rights against servicemen, spoke out against this deadly human experimentation and assisted those who had been harmed to gain restitution.
Government experimentation also included widespread testing of chemical and biological war weapons against unwitting populaces. Again, documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act told the story. New York, Florida, Washington, D.C., Georgia, Texas and California all became targets. In Florida, government agents started an epidemic of whooping cough. Coincidentally, statistics from the region showed a dramatic increase in the deaths of young children from this disease.
Such exposes subsequently sparked further investigations by government agencies. In response to widespread public concern regarding the secret dissemination of biological and chemical war weapons, U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone and U.S. Representative Martin Olav Sabo ensured special legislation directed at ending such abuses was included in the Defense Appropriations bill for fiscal year 1995.
Following passage of the bill, the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Toxicology established a special subcommittee to conduct public hearings in every city where open air tests were done.
Without the protections of the Freedom of Information Act, such reforms would not have been possible, for citizens are only able to criticize their government when they are able to pry out secrets some individuals in government would otherwise prefer to have buried.
Recognizing a need in society after the Act was passed, we published as a public service The Handbook on How to Use the Freedom of Information Act, which has enjoyed lasting popularity. Today, thanks to the joint efforts of the Church and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the handbook is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.eff.org/pub/activism/FOIA.
The brutality in war torn Bosnia has gripped the world’s attention. How could former neighbors and friends, who had lived together for centuries, have grown to hate one another so much?
Freedom Magazine, in conjunction with the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), has been investigating and exposing the origins and causes of this genocidal conflict since 1992.
At that time, members of CCHR realized that others interpreting events had failed to understand the parallel between the ethnic cleansing campaign of Bosnian Serb leader and psychiatrist Radovan Karadzic and the racial hygiene programs of Hitler’s psychiatric puppeteers.
By 1993, CCHR had gathered extensive evidence of the atrocities being committed under Karadzic and in June that year petitioned the United Nations to push forward and create an International War Crimes Tribunal.
After the tribunal was convened in November 1994, members of CCHR worked directly with the official investigators to provide the evidence which resulted in the indictment of Karadzic himself.
While many talk about human rights abuses during such outbursts of tyranny, Scientologists were among those doing something in Bosnia.
Back home, in the U.S., our constitutional freedoms will endure as long as those who cherish and respect them keep alive the notion that freedom exists only in the presence of responsibility.
There is a reason why drugs have travelled from the street into grade school.
Why many of today’s high school graduates can’t find their own city on a map.
Why divorces continue to mount and families shatter.
Why “feeling good” is better than “doing good.”
Find out why, and what can be done to help reverse society’s decay in Psychiatry: The Ultimate Betrayal by Bruce Wiseman.
To order your copy now, send check or money order for $24.95 (California residents, please add 8.25% sales tax.), plus $2.50 for shipping and handling. If you purchase five copies, the sixth book is free. $110 per 5 copies or $200 for 10 copies to:
Citizens Commission on Human Rights
What was the true cause of World War II?
Who escaped punishment, came to the U.S. and effectively continued the war?
And why were they allowed to continue, unapprehended?
This book explores the answers to these questions, and many more. It lays bare the truth, after years of extensive investigation, behind one of the most horrific chapters in history -- and the after-effects which are still felt today at all levels of society.
To order your copy now, send check or money order for $24.95 (California residents, please add 8.25% sales tax.), plus $2.50 for shipping and handling. If you purchase five copies, the sixth book is free. $110 per 5 copies or $200 for 10 copies to:
Citizens Commission on Human Rights
