MIT Expert Takes On CIA For Targeting Nelson Mandela As A Terrorist

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) PhD candidate Ryan Shapiro filed a lawsuit this morning against the CIA due to its failure to comply with his FOIA request for records on recently deceased anti-apartheid activist, global human rights hero and South African President, Nelson Mandela.

Shapiro is working to learn why the CIA viewed Mandela “a threat to American security,” and what actions the agency took to thwart Mandela’s efforts to secure racial justice and democracy in South Africa.

Shapiro’s work is bound to open the eyes of many Americans about vultures Greg Palast exposes in his latest movie, Vultures and Vote Rustler. The new flick exposes certain US leaders’ mega-dirty tricks used to precent Mandela from helping his people, even in his dying hours.

Shapiro’s a FOIA specialist, a historian of the policing of dissent and political functioning of national security. His pathbreaking FOIA work led the FBI to declare his MIT dissertation research a “threat to national security.”

Shapiro has FOIA requests for records on Mandela in motion with the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and National Security Agency. He is represented by FOIA specialist attorney Jeffrey Light.

The two specialists say two key issues related to today’s filing against the CIA are:

1) The CIA is widely and credibly believed to have been involved in Mandela’s 1962 arrest that led to his decades-long incarceration. The Agency, however, never admitted its role in this affair, and little specific public information exists on the matter.

2) Despite longstanding public knowledge of U.S. intelligence assistance to apartheid South Africa in general, and in Mandela’s arrest in particular, much of the U.S. and world press has paid distressingly little attention to these issues. Even in the wake of Mandela’s death, these issues, including the fact that Mandela remained on the U.S. terror watch list until 2008, have for the most part remained ignored or discounted. Shapiro’s efforts will bring much-needed attention to these vital topics, as well as to the U.S. intelligence community’s continued outrageous aversion to transparency.

“Though the U.S. intelligence community is long believed to have been involved in Mandela’s arrest, little specific public information exists regarding this involvement,” Shapiro said in a written statement today. “Similarly, though the U.S. intelligence community is long understood to have routinely provided information to the South African regime regarding the anti-apartheid movement, little specific public information exists about these activities either.

“Further, despite now being universally hailed as a hero and freedom fighter against gross injustice, Mandela was designated a terrorist by the United States government and remained on the U.S. terror watch list until 2008.”

Shapiro says that CIA’s compliance with his FOIA request will begin answering the following questions:

What was the extent and purpose of the U.S. intelligence community’s surveillance of Nelson Mandela prior to his arrest?

What role did the U.S. intelligence community play in Mandela’s arrest and prosecution?

What role did the U.S. intelligence community play in the broader effort to surveil and subvert the South African anti-apartheid movement?

To what extent, and for what objectives, did the U.S. intelligence community surveil Mandela following his release from prison?

To what extent, if any, did the U.S. intelligence community continue providing information regarding Mandela to the apartheid regime following Mandela’s release from prison?

What information did the U.S. intelligence community provide American policymakers regarding Mandela and the South African anti-apartheid movement?

To what extent, and to what ends, did the U.S. intelligence community surveil the anti-apartheid movement in the United States?

How did the United States government come to designate Nelson Mandela a terrorist threat to this country?

How did this designation remain unchanged until 2008?

And what was the role of the U.S. intelligence community in this designation and the maintenance thereof?

A CIA spokesperson declined to comment, saying in an email that the agency, as a general rule, does not comment on pending litigation, according to Legal Times.

The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Robert Wilkins.

Political analys Don DeBar stated soon after Mandela’s death, “Fifteen quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are carved into his memorial on the Washington Mall, but perhaps his harshest indictment of the United States is absent:

“’…I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.’ The omission is glaring at a time when the U.S. is engaged in even more wars than during Dr. King’s era. ‘Nor is there any mention that America’s wars are the cause of economic hardship at home.’”

Sources: Legal Times, Don De Bar, The Sparrow Project, Greg Palasts’ ‘Vultures and Vote Restlers’

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