The Ominous Machinations of Barney Fife
Best part? The detectives showed up during the professor's office hours, asking students in the hallway what Tinker-Salas was teaching them inside the classroom. Tinker-Salas, it probably goes without saying, is critical of the Bush administration's policies and public statements regarding Venezuela. The historian"figured in a Christian Science Monitor story last month dealing with whether Iran and Venezuela could forge a political counterweight to U.S. power," the Los Angeles Times notes.
Pomona College President David Oxtoby registered complaints with the Sheriff's Department and the FBI, and told reporters that the college was consulting with lawyers to see what other steps it could take to protest. The Times quoted Oxtoby as saying he was"extremely concerned about the chilling effect this kind of intrusive government interest could have on free scholarly and political discourse."
Another Pomona College professor, John Seely, posted about the police visit twice on the Huffington Post, writing -- in a post dripping with portent -- that the move coincided with a government attempt to demonize Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Seely also questioned the timing of an FBI press statement on the visit:"Note that the FBI statement comes on the same day that the Los Angeles Times published a front-page article on the U.S. administration's attempt to block Hugo Chavez's growing influence. Does it take too much to connect these two dots? Who ordered Professor Tinker Salas's interrogation? On what grounds? Does the Los Angeles Office of the FBI really take all of us to be such gullible chumps?"
Tinker-Salas sounded similar notes of concern. The San Jose Mercury News headlined their story on the visit,"Pomona professor blasts federal probe."
But what, exactly, was the nature of this"federal probe," and who were the official visitors? Tinker-Salas told reporters that the sheriff's detectives who interrogated him asked such incisive questions as: Is there a Venezuelan consulate in the area? The professor correctly noted that the detectives could have answered this question by Googling it, which suggests the possibility that what we have on our hands here are a couple of local cops who, not being perhaps the sharpest knives in the drawer, were fumbling helplessly with the task of protecting America against the, you know, Venezuelan terror threat.
Three years ago, working at a small local newspaper while I waited for my first year of grad school to arrive, I interviewed the head of another Los Angeles County joint police task force that had transitioned from narcotics enforcement to anti-terrorism investigations after the September 11 attacks. He described their investigation of a suspected Islamic terrorist cell in the wilds of Whittier -- some neighbors had reported having suspiciously Arab-looking neighbors who kept strange hours -- and detailed the tools at the task force's disposal: Covert surveillance, wiretapping, and so on. So I asked him what training his detectives had received in counter-terrorism investigations; they had none. I asked how many of his detectives were trained in Arabic language skills; you can guess the answer.
Since September 11, authorities have thrown bodies and badges at the terrorism threat. And here we see the outcome: A couple of guys from the sheriff's department, who were writing citations for driving with bad registration tags a few years ago, visiting professors to slyly inquire if there are any foreign consulates in the area. I'm reminded of the agents in J. Edgar Hoover's FBI who were assigned to watch television, monitoring for secret signals from Maoist talk show hosts to communist viewers from their masters in Peking. Big brother is kind of lumpy and sad, close up, and not just in the war on terrorism.
Perhaps the best reaction to this sort of threat to academic freedom would be to laugh at it, and politely send the police on their way.