Sergey Borisov: America's notorious freedom of speech

The FBI agents have checked 435 thousand facts since the events of September 11 of the past year – the facts, which had any connection with the anti-American activity. The country is going deep down in the atmosphere of the total suspicion. The museum manager from Houston, Donna Juanka was very surprised, when she saw FBI agents in front of the gates of her gallery. Juanka was getting ready for the opening of an exhibition, devoted to USA’s secret operations and governmental secrets. The title of the exhibition was “The Secret Wars.” Christian Science Monitor quoted Donna: “They looked like robots: dark suits and leather cases. What is so anti-American in the freedom of speech?” She had to spend an hour, answering the questions from the FBI agents.

As the mentioned newspaper wrote, the number of the American people, who had to answer the questions, asked by FBI agents, was growing because of their criticism against the war against terrorism, the president and the government. A lot of people do not mind those check-ups – they realize the situation in the country. But there are a lot of opinions that FBI has stepped over the line, threatening the freedom of speech. “If FBI examines the museum exhibitions, then it means they have crossed the line,”– David Cole from Georgetown University said. – FBI is supposed to probe the real facts about the criminal activity, not about the political activity.”

The new reality is horrid – nobody knows, who is going to be the next to aim a plane in a high-rise building. That is why the special services have to check on every piece of suspicious information. The current situation in the country shows, how fast this country can change. It is not known, what the terrorists wanted, when they slammed the flying planes in the WTO, but they have definitely taken peace and security away from the country.

The agents visited a 60-year-old man in San Francisco, a former employee of a telephone company. “Do you work out in this gym?” – was the question. The old man realized quickly that his “working out” didn’t have anything to do with that, but his political opinions that he often expressed there, were of great interest. He once said there that Osama had surely did very horrible things, but Bush did not have anything to be proud of, because he was a slave of large petroleum companies and his only interest in the Middle East was oil. Old man’s pals said he was not loyal and some of them made that call, which brought the agents to his door. The FBI agents told the man he had a right for the freedom of speech. “Thank you,” was the answer they got and the door was closed. The man heard one of the agents saying: “We will have to write the report anyway.”

FBI attendants consider the phone calls checking the routine, harmless work. They had that thought, when they were coming to the exhibition in the Houston museum. The owner of the museum did not like that though, when the agents stopped at every exhibit, asking what it was.

Sergey Borisov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov