INTERPOL and President Obama’s Executive Order
Jan 04 2010
“Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.” – – Alfred Lord Tennyson
Truth Sandwich
It is a commonly used managerial technique – if you have a piece of bad news to tell someone, you first fit the bad part in between two notes of praise. Truth on the internet can sometimes be like this technique. Give some misinformation, ground it in an actual event that you can link someone to, then hammer home the intended message. This new email is about a true event – an update to an Executive Order which granted full diplomatic immunity status to members of INTERPOL – turned in to a propaganda platform that plays loose with reality.
The Email
Read and Weep For Your Country . .
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
December 17, 2009
Executive Order — Amending Executive Order 12425
EXECUTIVE ORDER
- – - – - – -
AMENDING EXECUTIVE ORDER 12425 DESIGNATING INTERPOL AS A PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION ENTITLED TO ENJOY CERTAIN PRIVILEGES, EXEMPTIONS, AND IMMUNITIESBy the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), it is hereby ordered that Executive Order 12425 of June 16, 1983, as amended, is further amended by deleting from the first sentence the words “except those provided by Section 2(c), Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act” and the semicolon that immediately precedes them.
BARACK OBAMA
THE WHITE HOUSE,
December 16, 2009.
In the dead of night on December 17, 2009, President Barack Hussein Obama placed the United States of America under the authority of the international police organization known as INTERPOL, granting the organization full immunity to operate within the United States.
Last Thursday, December 17, 2009, The White House released an Executive Order “Amending Executive Order 12425.” It grants INTERPOL (International Criminal Police Organization) a new level of full diplomatic immunity afforded to foreign embassies and select other “International Organizations” as set forth in the United States International Organizations Immunities Act of 1945.
By removing language from President Reagan’s 1983 Executive Order 12425, this international law enforcement body now operates – now operates – on American soil beyond the reach of our own top law enforcement arm, the FBI, and is immune from Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
What, exactly does this mean? It means that INTERPOL now has the full authority to conduct investigations and other law enforcement activities on U.S. soil, with full immunity from U.S. laws such as the Freedom of Information Act and with complete independence from oversight from the FBI.
In short, a global law enforcement entity now has full law-enforcement authority in the U.S. without any check on its power afforded by U.S. law and U.S. law enforcement agencies.
A bit of background is in order here, and Hot Air provides it:
During his presidency, Ronald Reagan granted the global police agency Interpol the status of diplomatic personnel in order to engage more constructively on international law enforcement. In Executive Order 12425, Reagan made two exceptions to that status. The first had to do with taxation, but the second was to make sure that Interpol had the same accountability for its actions as American law enforcement — namely, they had to produce records when demanded by courts and could not have immunity for their actions.
Barack Obama unexpectedly revoked those exceptions in a change to EO 12425 last (week)…
Thus, Interpol now can conduct its operations on U.S. soil with ZERO accountability to anyone in this country.
And you beginning to understand now just what the ‘end game’ is on the part of those who are currently running the U.S. Government?
Let’s go a step further in fleshing out exactly what this means in practical terms. It gets ugly…and scary. Again, from ThreatsWatch:
Section 2c of the United States International Organizations Immunities Act is the crucial piece.
Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable.
Inviolable archives means INTERPOL records are beyond US citizens’ Freedom of Information Act requests and from American legal or investigative discovery (“unless such immunity be expressly waived.”)
Property and assets being immune from search and confiscation means precisely that. Wherever they may be in the United States. This could conceivably include human assets – Americans arrested on our soil by INTERPOL officers.
Why would INTERPOL be arresting American citizens on our own soil, without oversight from our own law enforcement agencies? And remember, citizens who are thusly arrested would have no legal authority to demand full documentation from the International Police concerning the charges brought against them.
Andy McCarthy at National Review asks these crucial, sobering questions of the secretive Obama order:
Why would we elevate an international police force above American law? Why would we immunize an international police force from the limitations that constrain the FBI and other American law-enforcement agencies? Why is it suddenly necessary to have, within the Justice Department, a repository for stashing government files which, therefore, will be beyond the ability of Congress, American law-enforcement, the media, and the American people to scrutinize?
At least one answer to these questions is very clear. A coup is underway in the United States of America, the goal of which is to establish complete, unquestioned authority over the citizens–a ‘fundamental change’ to the United States where citizens have no legal recourse against an authoritarian central government.
Don’t believe me ? From the White House website http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-amending-executive-order-12425
True Executive Order, False Interpretation
The email correctly represents the Executive Order, which was issued on December 17 and does grant additional diplomatic immunity to INTERPOL. However, the information in the commentary portion of the email is heavily partisan, short on facts and right from the anti-administration playbook. President Reagan did establish the original, restricted diplomatic status given to INTERPOL in 1984. At the time, INTERPOL and U.S. agency cooperation was not nearly as important as it is now. INTERPOL did not have offices in the United States, and technology and the threat of international terrorism were not nearly as important as they are in today’s environment. They opened an office in New York City in 2004, and then made a request to grant the same immunity to its workers as other international organizations.
According to The New York Times:
“When the office opened in 2004, we said look, we’d like to have the Interpol staff working in the office in New York afforded the same immunities as other international organizations,” Ms. Billington said. “It’s only for the New York office.”
The State Department recommended approving the request, but the Bush White House did not complete the matter before its term ended, and so it rolled over.
The White House said it put out no statement with Mr. Obama’s order because it viewed the matter as uninteresting.
Uninteresting, you say? How can we get ‘A coup is underway in the United States of America’ out of something the administration failed to even put out a press release on due to it not being newsworthy? Let’s see if we can find out where the truth lies.
What is INTERPOL?
INTERPOL is a multi national information gathering and sharing operation, designed to make sure other nations are aware of potential threats and arrest warrants for people residing in non-native countries.
INTERPOL is the world’s largest international police organization, with 188 member countries. Created in 1923, it facilitates cross-border police co-operation, and supports and assists all organizations, authorities and services whose mission is to prevent or combat international crime.
INTERPOL aims to facilitate international police co-operation even where diplomatic relations do not exist between particular countries. Action is taken within the limits of existing laws in different countries and in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. INTERPOL’s constitution prohibits ‘any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character.’
To further explain what INTERPOL does, I’ll take you back to the NYT:
Contrary to its portrayal in some movies, Interpol has no police force that conducts investigations and makes arrests. Rather, it serves its 188 member countries by working as a clearinghouse for police departments in different nations to share law enforcement information — like files on wanted criminals and terrorists, stolen cars and passports, and notices that a law enforcement agency has issued an arrest warrant for a fugitive.
In the United States, a bureau at the Justice Department staffed by American officials transmits information between law enforcement agencies and Interpol. If a foreign country issues an arrest warrant for a person inside the United States, it is up to the United States government, based on its own laws, to decide whether to apprehend the suspect.
“We don’t send officers into the field to arrest people; we don’t have agents that go investigate crimes,” said Rachel Billington, an Interpol spokeswoman. “This is always done by the national police in the member country under their national laws.”
This information is also discussed on the UN Dispatch site:
Interpol is also not an “international police force.” This would imply that Interpol is composed of units of officers that can chase criminals across the world, Jason Bourne style. In fact, there is no such thing as an “Interpol officer,” as such. Rather, law enforcement officers from Interpol’s member states are seconded to the organization from national law enforcement agencies, like the FBI, U.S. Marshals, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, ect.
This is not just a semantic distinction. Officers seconded to Interpol do not have any sort of transnational executive arrest power. Rather, officers seconded to Interpol do things like coordinate busts of international child pornography rings. The people actually making the arrests, though, are members of the national law enforcement of the country where the crimes are committed. They are not “Interpol Officers” — because there is no such thing as an “Interpol Officer.” Further, “Interpol” can’t arrest an American on American soil, a Canadian on Canadian soil or a Rwandan on a Rwandan soil. Only national law enforcement can do that.
Analysis
The above explanations should provide comfort enough to dismiss this email. There are no INTERPOL police officers. If they find out something that would help our various intelligence and law enforcement groups, they pass it on. If they discover that a hunted person from another nation is residing here, we are told about it. Then we decide what we want to do about it. It is a completely U.S.-led operation the entire time.
Going back to the question of how did we got Coup from Uninteresting, the answer lies in the combination of two major emotional issues for email and web users, or alternatives to the mainstream media. The first is the fear and certainty some people have about a future ‘New World Order’, which of course would require a one world government where Americans are no longer sovereigns. The second of course is the persistent belief that President Obama is secretly turning our nation into a socialist state. Put those two elements into the same email and you have a virus waiting to be released. The rhetoric is rather boilerplate but it has been turned up a level recently. We should see it go up even higher in the run-up to the 2010 elections, from both sides.
Additional Sources
UN Dispatch
Snopes
INTERPOL
The New York Times
Update – Comment Source
Visit Ron’s Conservative Analysis blog for an opposing view of this story. He details a greater history of the International Organizational Immunities Act and a deep analysis of the changes made over the years. Although we disagree on the ramifications of this issue, his blog is very well written and worth a look.
Discussion
Posts are not held for moderation so your comment will appear immediately, but may be modified or deleted if it is inappropriate.
I expect much better from MOAA than to be a mouthpiece for the Obama administration. This piece is nothing but liberal eyewash distracting from the core issues and fundamental aspects of a clear and unambiguous assault on our sovereignty and nation.
This Executive Order means the Interpol investigators have diplomatic immunity (I think) and their investigative reports and other documents – including maybe individual profiles? – are private and can not be accessed by U.S. law enforcement or by FOI request. This section does not simply provide Interpol investigators easy access to the United States with their new passports. Reagan did NOT include certain privileges for INTERPOL for a reason seeing the clear danger of an external police organization and its agents working unencumbered by our laws and Constitution on our on soil. In other words, by making sure INTERPOL is subject to the same FOIA and 4th amendment protections, it could not just indiscriminately investigate or prosecute without making available its procedures and data to the accused. It is fundamental. That has now changed.
Here’s an entity–residing in the Department of Justice–to which files, executive branch information, in short, any information that the President does not want Congress or the press to see–where “inconvenient” info can be dumped that’s beyond the power of most to bring to the light of day.
In reality, we have just handed over our sovereignty. Interpol headquarters in the US is currently headquartered in the Department of Justice. A ‘separate’ Interpol agency has been created in the DOJ – let that sink in for a moment. Interpol has been granted diplomatic immunity now by Obama – they have exemption from being subject to search and seizure by law enforcement, US taxes and immunity from FOIA requests, etc. This action could also be used to divulge American military secrets and a whole host of horrific practices having to do with going after our military. It’s the road to internationalism on steroids.
With the signing of an under-publicized amendment to Executive Order 12425, Barack Obama has fundamentally altered your constitutional rights. His actions are undermining your rights to protect personal privacy from a foreign internationalist police agency named Interpol. A one-paragraph executive order may seem inconsequential to many, but this action has far reaching implications and threatens the sovereignty of America. Interpol is the enforcement arm of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The United States never signed onto the Rome Treaty which created the ICC because of the potential for abuse by foreign interests. Obama has signaled he may sign the treaty over these objections and subject Americans to prosecution overseas in the ICC. This is harmful for two reasons. First, the U.S. Constitution clearly states that it is the supreme law of our land and allowing the ICC to supersede the U.S. Constitution violates America’s sovereignty. Second, the War on Terror is unpopular with Europeans and the ICC may attempt to prosecute heroic American soldiers with trumped up war crimes. Obama is putting brave American men and women at grave risk
When US soldiers are standing in front of a kangaroo court in the Hague because of information, records and investigation unseen by US law enforcement was given to the ICC by their special investigators (who have special relationships with Syria, Iran, Russia, and Libya as well), what will MOAA’s position be then after having supporting this attack against us in the first place?
Hey,
You’ve missed/skipped a couple of important details…
I did a history & explanation of this over @ my place (got here from there via long and circuitous route) – Go HERE and you’ll see that, like so many things Obama has done that’s left people shaking their heads, this act wasn’t ‘overt’ so much as ‘set-up’… and the Devil is in the details.
– Ron
Nice post & nice blog. I love both.
Ron, thank you for the link to your analysis, I have updated the article to point people towards it for an alternative view of the action taken by the White House.
Secret international laws being created. Earth will have a world government if we help design it or not. Lets do it without any deception or violence, based on psychology and math instead of threats, where all 7 billion people have equal power and theres no difference between government and civilian. New research made this possible. gov by the ppl
http://digg.com/politics/Secret_government_being_created_Instead_help_us_design_it
To add some more context to this issue, check out Newsweek’s response to Chuck Norris’ piece from WorldNetDaily.
Or consider the NRA’s response to the conspiracy theories.
I have been discovering quite a few distinct ideas on this and uncover it submit to be one of the more enlightening on the topic. Wish we can increase the top quality of responses than which I possess seen as a lot of do not appear to be quite applicable.