Patriots Act: Voices of Dissent and the Risk of Speaking Out

by Bill Katovsky

A collection of interviews with individuals who risked their own lives, careers, or jail time to defend a principle or a cause are presented in this oral history examination of the human cost of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1592288162
• ISBN13: 9781592288168
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Length: 322 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Explosive, Inspiring Reading

Maybe this book got buried in the rising slag-heap mountain of titles exposing the bald-faced lies of George Bush and his puppeteers. Or perhaps somebody thought that Patriots Act was just some un-ironic, dry policy look at the crazy, paranoid post-9/11 government policy that started ripping out the Constitution like so much stained green shag carpet in a North Las Vegas motel. Not at all! This collection of personal stories -- an oral history in the mode of the legendary Studs Terkel, where the interviewer gets the key subjects talking straight from the soul -- is like a heat-seeking missile, right on target with the issues tearing our nation and the world apart. Don't be fooled by the quiet decency of the book's subjects, some of them famous, some of them unknown, but all of them willing to stick their necks out for principle. It's bracing to read the words of Daniel Ellsberg, the defense analyst who risked all to leak the Pentagon Papers to stop the Vietnam War; or of triple amputee, Vietnam war vet and former Veterans Administration director and U.S. Senator from Georgia Max Cleland who talks about how our power-mad leaders led our young soldiers into Iraq and toward the same misguided charnel house that consumed his generation in Vietnam. Or why former FBI agent Colleen Rowley risked her long career to reveal how internecine federal agency warfare and career caution at the FBI made the U.S. vulnerable to the tragic Al Qaeda attacks of 2001. More subtle in the book are the gray men and women, loyal to government service and principle, like Rand Beers, who took over from Richard Clarke as White House counter-terror advisor. Beers later resigned in protest five days before the nation went to war in Iraq on false pretenses. More moving yet in the book are the smallest and most vulnerable of our residents and citizens, like the Syrian-American teenager who was thrown into INS prison with her mother for nine months in a mass sweep of our Arabic populace in the wake of 9/11. Convince me that she is not a more patriotic adherent of democracy than most of us. But tucked away in the book's center of these portraits of high character in low times is a shocker right in synch with today's headlines. And I mean today!-- when the British MI-5 and other security agencies stopped a plot by suicidal jihadis aiming to blow up a dozen airliners traveling from Great Britain to the America. Smack in the middle of Patriots Act is an incendiary interview with former FAA counter-terrorist Red Team member Bogdan Dzakovic. As part of the Red Team, Dzakovic zealously tested airport and airplane security measures. He and team members simulated terrorist attacks. They posed as hijackers. They snuck bombs and weapons onto aircraft. Dzakovic 's Red Team succeeded and found aviation security lacking nearly nine times out of ten, but the politically compromised FAA reacted not with proper alarm and concern, but with apathy, embarrassment and cover-ups. When Dkakovic

Get it. Give it. Live it.

Patriots Act reveals a unseen world of political experience, guiding you through the lives of people who've made their dissent the functional center of their life. John Sellers' Ruckus stunts (actually brilliantly executed media events), Randi Rhodes' fearless denunciations of George Bush, a TSA security manager's frustration with airport inadequacies and illogicalities, a next-door-neighbor couple's confrontation with anti-First Amendment goons at a July Fourth event with the prez, and 16 other "oral histories" gave me an in-depth - and occasionally shocking - view of protest as patriotism. What Katovsky has done here - as in his previous book, "Embedded: The Media in Iraq "(buy it!)- is to let the people on the forefront of our culture, media, and society tell their stories in their own words. I'm always amazed at how articulate and erudite people can be when they speak with passion about the issues they care most about. But Patriots Act is not a compilation of transcribed complaints. Each of the interviewees brings another piece of the puzzle to light. How is it that the most American trait of all - the right and ability to dissent - is often looked upon as anti-American? Why does a whistle-blower have to lose his or her job when attempting to bring problems to the public's attention and solve endemic problems? Why do Americans put personal comfort behind the need for honesty, truth, and accountability? The first copy of this book I bought, I sent directly to a politically active friend who experiences chronic bouts of "what's the use?" When we spoke on the phone days later she sounded as invigorated as she was when I first met her, twenty-some years ago. Get it. Give it. Live it.