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Humiliating
ordeal: Snowden's lawyer 'harassed' at Heathrow Airport
RT,
17
February, 2014
Jesselyn
Radack, a human rights advocate, whistleblower group member and
lawyer to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, has been detained and
questioned in a strange fashion by customs staff at London’s
Heathrow Airport.
As
she was going through customs, she was led to a separate room by a
Heathrow Border Force agent who showed no interest in her documents,
but seemed intent on asking her a series of questions that appeared
aimed at emotional intimidation.
Speaking
to Firedoglake
following the weekend incident, Radack recounted the ordeal, saying
it was “very
hostile.”
The agent found out she was on her way to the Ecuadorian Embassy in
London, where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange continues to be holed
up. A meeting of the Sam Adams Associates whistleblowers’ group was
to take place.
The
Sam Adams group is comprised of retired CIA officers, taking their
name from a CIA whistleblower during the Vietnam War. They stand for
the promotion of ethics, and for the integrity and accountability of
government. They give
out
an annual whistleblower award for particular achievements in those
fields; Edward Snowden and Bradley/Chelsea Manning were its latest
recipients, although Assange and Radack herself also made the cut.
I'm
fine. Heathrow's Border Force was just trying to intimidate me. "Who
is Edward Snowden?" "Do you know him?" "Where is
Bradley Manning?"
“Who
will you be seeing?”
asked the agent. She replied with the name of the group, giving him a
list of members – all prominent figures in rights advocacy and
whistleblowing: “Ray
McGovern, Annie Machon, Thomas Drake, Craig Murray,”
she replied, adding that she is also a member.
Once
the agent had realized the meeting was to be held at the Ecuadorian
Embassy, he went on to ask her if it was with Julian Assange. “Yes,”
she replied.
“Why
have you gone to Russia twice in three months?”
the customs agent then asked in a seemingly unrelated follow-up
question, to which Radack she replied that it was her client, Edward
Snowden.
More
bizarre still: “Who
is Edward Snowden?”
Radack answered truthfully that he was a whistleblower, which was
followed by a no less bizarre “Who
is Bradley Manning?”
with Radack answering once more – “a
whistleblower.”
“Where
is he?”
the agent asked of the jailed leaker, now known as Chelsea Manning.
Radack replied – “in
jail”.
“So
he’s a criminal?”,
he retorted. “He’s
a political prisoner,”
came the reply from Radack, who was unwilling to lose her composure
and continued replying dryly to every question.
The
agent then started asking her of her connection to Snowden and if she
represented him, to which she said – no, but the border agent was
intent on pushing ahead with the line of questioning: “But
you represent Snowden?”
“Yes,
I’m a human rights lawyer,”
Radack explained as questions with obvious answers were fired at her.
Drake,
who is also one of the members of the Sam Adams Group, bore witness
to the entire interrogation, recounting how the border agent had had
a “threatening
demeanor.”
Radack
later recalled how she kept her composure throughout the
interrogation, but almost broke down in tears afterward, wondering
how the agent knew to ask all these questions, and why.
As
it turned out, she was on the so-called “inhibited
persons list”
– a category created by the Department of Homeland Security
implying that a TSA agent has the authority not to grant that person
passenger a border pass and/or allow them into the next area.
Another
lawyer – Jennifer Robinson, who has also represented Snowden –
appeared on the “inhibited
passenger”
list in April 2012. The categorization was then very fresh, having
been invented only in March 2012, and pertains, among other things,
to an agreement with the United Kingdom to agree to “new
rules that required airlines to provide the Department of Homeland
Security with details of passengers even if they weren’t traveling
to the United States..."
Robinson’s own Heathrow experience created uproar among her
Australian colleagues.
Following
the ordeal at Heathrow, Radack came out with a public statement
denouncing the whole practice and the harassment it often entails:
“The
government, whether in the US, UK or elsewhere does not have the
authority to monitor, harass or intimidate lawyers for representing
unpopular clients.”
The
events come on the heels of new
revelations
about the extent of NSA powers in their mission to curb or somehow
influence the ability of lawyers to communicate with their clients,
if those clients are of interest to the United States. With the help
of the Australian government, the NSA had been gathering private
communications between a US law firm and clients in the Indonesian
government, which happened to be in a trade dispute with Washington,
the New York Times revealed in the latest document leaked by Edward
Snowden.
Another
similar story involving Heathrow, Snowden and the NSA involved the
Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald’s partner David Miranda, who in
August of 2013 was detained at the airport for nine hours in line
with the UK’s law on terrorism. The fleeting connection to Snowden
was enough for agents to have the authority to seize all his
electronic equipment in their bid to intercept any communications
taking place with the whistleblower.
Radack
once told RT that despite the fact that “it’s
a dangerous time for whistleblowers in the US,”
Snowden’s revelations have had a big effect as “courage
is contagious.”
She added that “I
really think [Snowden] has had a wonderful effect [on] the US and the
world.”
Pretty obvious that all these thugs are in league together. Therefore, we should treat them all the same. I'll let you guess what that is, but personally, I subscrice to "extreme prejudice".
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