Though the prospect of so many dangerous new neighbors may have stirred mixed feelings about the prison in any small community, the publisher of the town where the prison was built says citizens are happy with the way it worked out.

Bob Wood has been publisher of The Florence Citizen in Florence, Colo., since 1987, and he was a writer there for six years before that. As communities in Iowa and Illinois consider the possible transformation of the Thomson, Ill., prison into a federal “supermax” facility, Wood’s experiences could prove useful for analyzing the potential impacts of such a plan.

The U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, also known as ADX Florence or “The Alcatraz of the Rockies,” opened 15 years ago. It sits on 37 acres of land, contains just under 500 beds for prisoners, and is one of three correctional facilities that comprise the Florence Federal Correctional Complex, each with a different security level.

“Our area is the headquarters for the state prison system, so prisons were nothing new to us,” Wood said in a telephone interview with The Iowa Independent Thursday.

“When the Bureau of Federal Prisons originally started looking, we had an old Catholic school and monastery that had been closed down and already had a lot of classroom-type buildings and offices. Our economic development council was actively seeking somebody to fill that property. They got in touch with the bureau, but that was not deemed to be a suitable location, so they started looking at other properties here in Florence.”

The residents of Florence didn’t just actively promote their community as a good spot for the new prison, they raised money to purchase a tract of land for it. Once the land was purchased, they donated it to the Bureau of Prisons.

All of this took place, of course, before the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building and the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., when terrorism was not on most people’s minds. If citizens of Florence knew then what they know now about the types of people who could be housed in the prison, would they have put so much work into attracting it?

According to Wood, they would.

“We get questions all the time from people wanting to know if we are concerned about housing terrorism suspects. Well, we already have them,” he said. “We’ve had Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski and some of those others — Zacarias Moussaoui — have all been house there.

“Granted, [if it weren't for recent terrorist attacks like 9/11 and the OKC bombing], there wouldn’t be as many of them. But this is such a secure facility, I don’t know how they could ever possibly communicate with each other and plan something.”

Because the facility houses the most dangerous inmates in the federal prison system, most are kept in seven-by-12-foot cells for 23 hours per day. The one free hour is spent exercising alone in a separate concrete chamber that resembles an empty swimming pool. Specific architectural features, including strategic placement of windows, prevent prisoners from even knowing their exact location within the facility. In a 2007 report with CBS News, the warden described the setting as “a clean version of hell.”

To the facility’s neighbors in Florence, the hell behind the prison walls is hardly noticeable.

“It is very isolated,” Wood said. “We hear very little from it. It just really doesn’t effect the community at all. People find it hard to believe that is true, but we honestly just rarely hear from them. They handle their own medical emergencies and all of those types of things.”

The one thing Wood would tell the people of Clinton, Iowa, and other communities near Thomson as they consider a similar facility nearby is to talk to others who have been through it.

“I went to Sheridan, Oregon to assess the situation there,” he said. “I found what happened there to be very similar to what has happened here. They have the same complaints: That it did not bring immediate financial benefit, but it did, in the long-term, begin to show up.”

If the federal government moves forward with purchasing the Thomson Correctional Center, communities like Clinton and Thomson will, like Florence, see an immediate but temporary economic boost from workers hired to renovate the facility.

“We had some benefit when they were building because many of the construction workers lived in town,” Wood said. “They filled up all the rentals, most of the hotels were full, and the restaurants were always busy. But once that construction phase was over, it took a long time for any real economic impact.”

Because prison guards and other federal prison employees are promoted from within the system, Wood said it took time for locals who hoped to work at the Florence facility to make their way in. Nearly all open positions at the prison were initially filled by existing employees transferred into the area from elsewhere, but now several from the community work there.

The prison has certainly benefitted the local economy, Wood said, but not all of the promises officials made in the planning stages have come to fruition. Officials spoke of a major boon to the region in increased demand for agricultural products and laundry services, for example.

“They promoted that would happen, but I don’t think that every really happened,” Wood said.

Although many Americans would fear the possibility of having suspected terrorists from the Guantanamo Bay military prison in their backyard, Wood says that no one in Florence is concerned about that possibility. Wood also knows that the Florence prison is nearing its full capacity, so the federal government will likely have to find a home for its detainees elsewhere.

“It’s not talked about in restaurants. You can go in, have a cup of coffee and hear the conversations around you, and I’ve never heard that [there is fear],” Wood said. “The only time it seems to come up is when the New York Times or someone calls and wants to do a story about it. Then the residents are talking about the media doing the story, but I honestly don’t think people here would be intimidated by that.”

Jill Kozeny, communications director for Grassley, was responding to an Iowa Independent story in which Kiernan attacked the senator’s comparison of civilian trials for terror suspects to the murder trial of O.J. Simpson. Kiernan called Grassley’s comparison “fear mongering” designed to “distract from the larger national security issues facing our country.” He said Grassley was calling into question the constitutional right to a trial by jury.

While questioning U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Wednesday during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Grassley was attempting to make the point that assurances from the administration that the suspects would never be acquitted were not enough.

Holder said in response to Grassley’s questions that the likelihood of acquittal is remote, and if it were to happen, the suspects would never be released in the U.S. Justice Department officials told the New York Times that even if suspects are acquitted, the Obama administration will keep them locked up forever as a “combatant” under the laws of war.

“As Sen. Grassley revealed with the questions he asked yesterday, the administration’s argument for trying the terrorists in a federal court is a hollow one because the Attorney General pledged to keep the terrorists as enemy combatants regardless of the outcome in the courtroom,” she said. “The real questions are, why are terrorists being given more rights than U.S. service members fighting overseas, and why are Americans being subjected to an expensive security risk on U.S. soil if the terrorists could end up being held by the United States under military detention, just as they are being held today?”

Kozeny said Holder’s promise that the suspects will be convicted has “threatened the fairness of the trial by jury that is the bedrock of the U.S. Constitution,” a fact she says undermines Kiernan’s attacks.

While questioning Attorney General Eric Holder about the idea of prosecuting five men accused as co-conspirators in the Sept. 11 attacks in a federal court in New York, Grassley said assurances that they will be convicted ring hollow since “I think a lot of Americans thought O.J. Simpson ought to be convicted of murder, rather than being in jail for what he’s in jail for now. It seemed to me ludicrous.”

“I’m a farmer, not a lawyer, but I just wanted to make an observation,” Grassley said.

Kiernan said Grassley is engaging in “Karl Rove-style fear-mongering tactics” that are designed to “distract from the larger national security issues facing our country.”

“Trial by jury is the bedrock of the US Constitution,” Kiernan said. “Grassley calls this constitutional right into question and insults the American people, who every day make difficult and complicated decisions. There is simply no place for Grassley’s disrespectful politicization of this issue in today’s debate.”

After Grassley’s statement, Holder assured Iowa’s senior senator that even if acquitted terror suspects would not be released in the U.S.

Liberal blog Talking Points Memo has video of the exchange between Grassley and Holder.

President Barack Obama has said he wants Guantanamo Bay facility by January. A nearly-empty Illinois prison near the Mississippi River on the border with Braley’s district is among U.S. locations being considered to house the detainees.

Caitlin Legacki, Braley’s communication director, said the congressman has met with officials from the White House, Department of Homeland Security and the Illinois Bureau of Prisons to discuss the security implications associated with this proposal.

“Additionally, Congressman Braley believes the input of surrounding communities should be considered in this decision-making process,” Legacki said. “This decision should be made based on our national security interests and the safety and security of our citizens, not based on people trying to score political points.”

Earlier Monday, Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Matt Strawn called on Braley to oppose the proposal to move the detainees to Illinois. That call was later joined by U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, who said if the terrorist were ever released “innocent people would die and some of them likely will be Americans.”

According to Federal Bureau of Prisons statistics, there are already 347 inmates in federal prisons convicted of international or domestic terrorism. Those include Richard Reid, known as the “shoe bomber,” Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the man behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Wadih El-Hage, Osama bin Laden’s former secretary, and Zacarias Moussaoui, who was convicted for his role in the 9/11 attacks.

Under the plan to shut down the Guantanamo Bay facility, only about 60 detainees would be transferred to Illinois.

Erin Rosa takes a look at the Colorado Information Analysis Center (CIAC) and what role it will play in the Democratic National Convention, scheduled next month in Denver.

When the Democratic National Convention is held in August, CIAC will be operating 24 hours a day and be fully staffed with up to eight intelligence analysts at any given time.

“CIAC is going to be expanding hours for physical presence in the office,” Clem says about the convention. “Any known threats specifically related to the convention are going to go right to the United States Secret Service and FBI, but CIAC is going to be there to take any reports that citizens have.”

Since fusion centers around the country have gone largely unexamined by the mainstream media, The Iowa Independent and its sister sites in Minnesota, Colorado, Michigan and New Mexico will each release a report on activity in their state throughout the week.

Russell Porter, director of the Iowa Intelligence Fusion Center, was one of a group of people who helped lay the groundwork for the fusion center concept around the country.

Made up of law enforcement personnel and state and federal intelligence analysts, the center has six regional offices around the state and nearly 50 staff members.

Law enforcement says it’s an essential tool. Civil liberties advocates worry that creating one-stop shops for sensitive information could lead to abuses. But the fusion center concept is expanding across the country, and in the process, creating a nationwide intelligence network whose activities are barely known to the public.

Traditionally, police had little to do with counterterrorism. But after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it became obvious that al-Qaeda members had prepared not only in far-off Afghan training camps but also in Minnesota and flight schools in Florida. An unwitting Maryland state trooper actually stopped one of the future hijackers for speeding.

Fusion centers are where the federal, state and local cops share intelligence, sift data for clues, run down reports of suspicious packages, and connect dots in an effort to detect and thwart drug smuggling, gang fighting and other menaces to society.

Russell Porter, director of the Iowa Intelligence Fusion Center, said the center has been very successful at its mission since it was first established 3 1/2 years ago.

“There are challenges and concerns, and we are very aware of that,” he said. “It works for Iowa because we have worked to give authority to local officials to dictate the fusion center’s direction.”

Porter’s career in Iowa law enforcement dates back to 1978, with a focus on intelligence since 1984. In the national intelligence community, Porter is well-known and respected. He was working on his doctoral thesis on intelligence gathering in law enforcement when the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks happened, and along with a number of groups and organizations, including the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), Porter helped craft a plan to fix what went wrong with domestic intelligence gathering while protecting fundamental rights of privacy and civil liberties.

“When 9/11 happened, suddenly there was the political will in Washington and around the country to do something,” he said. “A few of us put together the IACP Criminal Intelligence Sharing Summit in March of 2002. A colleague of mine and I served as the technical writers for that report, which was published in August of 2002. It called for the creation of a national criminal intelligence sharing plan and a criminal intelligence coordinating council.”

That laid the groundwork for “fusion centers,” with an underlying goal of keep Americans safe. Whether or not that has happened is something that is difficult to quantify. Porter, for one, does not see terrorism as the biggest threat facing Iowans.

“It’s a cliché, but, yes, Americans are safer, but we are not yet safe,” he said. “We need to keep a realistic perspective on the threats that we face. In cities across America, we still have significant gang problems. There are still issues with domestic violence. We still face those community problems. We’re stronger at how we deal with those things, and I think we’re better informed, but the danger persists.”

While the initial idea behind creating these centers around the country was to combat terrorism, the mission in Iowa has evolved to the point where its biggest successes deal with home-grown crime.

Operations are divided by regions, with Fusion Offices in Sioux City (Region 1), Waterloo (2), Oelwein (3), Atlantic (4), Des Moines (5), and Blue Grass (6). (Click for full size)

The organization

The Iowa Intelligence Fusion Center was established in December 2004. But unlike a lot of states that are building similar networks across the country, Iowa had a head start. The Fusion Center was built on the skeleton of the Iowa Law Enforcement Intelligence Network (LEIN), a system designed to share information among law enforcement agencies that has been in place since 1984.

“We took something that has been around since 1984 and said let’s invest in it to strengthen it and make it operate more smoothly,” Porter said. “So we took each of our six LEIN regions and determined one agency in each region that was willing to step up and served as the grantee for the fusion office. Really, this is just a strengthening of capabilities we’ve had in place for decades. ”

The six regional offices are located in urban areas such as Des Moines, Sioux City and Waterloo, but also in rural outposts like Atlantic and Independence. There are 21 total staffers working in the regional offices around the state, ranging from two staffers in the Region 6 office in Blue Grass to five staffers in the Region 4 office in Atlantic.

The headquarters for the state’s fusion centers is led by the Iowa Department of Public Safety (IDPS) and located in the department’s offices in the State Capitol Complex at 215 E. Seventh St. in Des Moines. There are 23 staff members, including 10 intelligence analysts and 13 law enforcement officers. Among the staff are representatives from the Iowa State Patrol, the State Division of Narcotics Enforcement, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, the Iowa Fire Marshall’s office and The Midwest High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also supplies two staffers to the fusion center.

Porter expects an analyst from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to be assigned to the Iowa Fusion Center soon.

Dennis Rudolph, operations supervisor at the Region 4 Fusion Center, said the major difference between LEIN and the fusion centers is “the difference between reactive and proactive.”

“LEIN was a reactive thing,” he said. “You bring people together and they say what problems they were having this month, everyone talks and if a couple match up, they get together and they talk and compare notes. The fusion center is more proactive, using our resources to say this is a problem happening in western Nebraska which seems to be moving east, so you should be aware.”

Each regional office is somewhat autonomous, Porter said, forming its own governing structure depending on local needs. Each regional supervisor reports to Porter, who reports to Iowa Department of Public Safety Commissioner Eugene Meyer, who reports to Gov. Chet Culver. There is also a LEIN Executive Board, made up of seven members: a law enforcement officer from each region and Porter.

Federal funding cut

Almost 90 percent of the main fusion center’s funding comes from state appropriation and the IDPS’ budget, Porter said. The agencies that supply staff to the center, like the FBI, cover their salaries, but the rest falls under the domain of the IDPS.

The six regional offices, on the other hand, are funded almost entirely out of federal Department of Homeland Security grants. In fact, one of the biggest determining factors of whether a municipality would be the site of a regional office was its willingness to take on the responsibility of working to attain federal grant money.

“As you can imagine, it can sometimes be very arduous,” Porter said.

To make matters more difficult, the federal government has cut the amount of money it puts into the fusion center program in recent years. According to an October 2007 report by the Government Accountability Office, Homeland Security grants totaled more than $130 million from 2004 to 2006. But in 2006, the total amount allocated dropped from $57 million to $43 million. Iowa was not immune.

“I think next year is going to be tough for us,” Rudolph said. “I think some thought has gone into turning to local municipalities to try to get some funding, but budgets are tight. I think law enforcement and emergency management are going to lose something very good if the federal government squeezes this program financially.”

The mission expands

The intelligence scope of the Iowa fusion centers is defined as “all crimes,” not just counterterrorism.

This all-crimes approach is essential, Porter said, in order to keep Iowans safe and protect the country against terrorism. Rudolph said while you won’t see cases in Iowa opened because “someone is a terrorist,” you will see someone busted early on before getting the chance to commit a terrorist act. Groups plotting terrorist attacks could first commit crimes such as money laundering, drug dealing or illegal gun sales to finance their operations.

“You have to fund terrorism somehow, and a lot of times it’s through illegal activity,” he said. “We start seeing a guy in Iowa selling dope, then all the sudden you see his name come up in a meeting with Nebraska, and he’s selling guns there. You start looking at him a little harder.”

Porter said the Iowa fusion centers follow the traditional model for the intelligence process. That begins with defining information requirements, or things that are important for people to know about. For example, crimes involving children are required to be reported up the chain of the fusion center. So earlier this year when a man tried to entice a young girl into his car in rural Guthrie County, local law enforcement told the fusion office, which reported it up to the central fusion center. That is when it was determined that another incident had occurred, which warranted a bulletin to be sent out to law enforcement personnel.

“I hate using this phrase, but it is our job to connect the dots,” Porter said.

In August 2006, the Department of Homeland Security issued “Fusion Center Guidelines,” which, among other things, defined information requirements on a federal level. Now, certain information is automatically shared with surrounding states or the Department of Homeland Security.

When information comes down from Washington, D.C., sometimes there is a disconnect, Porter said.

“Sometimes, priorities may be different, or lexicon might be different,” he said. “That’s why it’s important to get everyone on the same page.”

The Iowa fusion centers also played a role in the recent flooding. While their mission does not include “all hazards,” as some states’ do, Rudolph said the fusion centers, since they work with many different agencies, can work to help them overcome their interoperability issues.

One of the best aspects of the fusion centers, Rudolph said, is the fact that it has created a working relationship among law enforcement on many levels.

“It is very helpful that we all are starting to know one another and work together regularly,” he said. “Prior to the fusion centers, no one really knew who to turn to or talk to. Now, we work with the FBI, [the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms], [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], and several other agencies at least a couple times a month. That was unheard of before.”

Porter said in many cases, criminal activity cannot be ruled out right away, so it is the fusion center’s responsibility to become involved.

“If a chemical plant explodes, it could be criminal, it could be human error, it could be negligence. You can’t rule anything out,” he said.

The fusion centers’ job is not investigative, Rudolph said, but rather as a way for all information to be gathered in one location, analyzed and sent to the places it needs to go.

“We’re a clearinghouse for intelligence, not a storage facility. We’re a middle man,” Rudolph said.

The Iowa fusion centers have access to national data bases such as Law Enforcement Online and Regional Information Sharing Systems Intranet. They also have access to Homeland Security Information Network, but only the “controlled but unclassified” version. Porter anticipates that with the addition of a Department of Homeland Security employee to the fusion center staff, the center will gain access to the “secret” version of the network.

“We think the fusion center would benefit from the assignment of a U.S. DHS employee, and access to HSDN-Secret, so that the DHS employee is here and the system is accessible before the onset of a crisis,” he said. “We also know that the information environment is constantly changing, so we are always keeping an eye out for information systems that might be developed that will help us serve Iowa and our communities better.”

A threat to civil liberties?

Civil liberties advocates worry that the growing tentacles of these networks, linking many government agencies and potentially private industry as well, could breach the privacy of law-abiding citizens.

They argue that laws were put into place to avoid these types of networks because history has shown they lead to abuse. They add that the “all crimes” approach sounds suspiciously like the government is building a distributed domestic intelligence service that could easily begin keeping tabs on Americans who are doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights.

“We don’t think we have to give up the privileges that come with being a law-abiding citizen in order to be safe,” said Ben Stone, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa. “The danger with this sort of thing is that you end up making everyone a suspect, and that’s not the way you do law enforcement.”

Earlier this year, the ACLU issued a report entitled “What’s Wrong With Fusion Centers,” which cited concerns about military units operating in the centers, as well as the potential for scope creep and data mining. How, the group asked, can citizens contest information about themselves, given the patchwork of state, local and federal sunshine laws that may or may not apply?

Porter not only understands the concerns, he takes them very seriously.

In April, he testified before Congress about the history of the fusion center concept, and the history of the abuse of civil liberties by law enforcement in the name of making the country safer. He pointed to the FBI’s notorious Counter Intelligence Program, known as Cointelpro, during the 1960s and early 1970s, which included a series of covert and often illegal projects aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. When exposed, Cointelpro was greeted with lawsuits, complaints and headlines, and the program was shut down.

“It is critically important that we avoid the historical practices that led to reoccurring violations of privacy rights and civil liberties,” Porter said in his testimony.

Since his testimony before Congress, Porter said he has been traveling the country to teach other state fusion centers the history of intelligence gathering abuse, in the hopes that it will remain a priority.

“It has got to be given high visibility and high attention because it is one of the things that causes us to fail in this business,” he said. “From my past study and research, it’s a pivot point to success or failure. It’s essential to protect the principles on which this country was founded. With the fusion centers, we built on the history, successes and the problems that we had in the past.”

Standards for centers include a ban on information concerning the political, religious or social views of an individual or group unless the information is directly related to criminal activity. Also, there must be a reasonable suspicion that an individual is involved in a crime before information is collected.

“These have been court tested, civil liberties advocates find them acceptable and so we held those out to make sure that if you’re going to do this business, you need to adhere to those regulatory frameworks,” Porter said.

“There is so little that is publicly known about the fusion centers,” the ACLU’s Stone said. “I think that is why some people are worried. History has shown that when people get unfettered power, it will be abused. So I believe there should be an inherent skepticism with this.”

An uncertain future

Iowans can rest assured that law enforcement is doing everything it can to keep them safe, Porter said. But there are storm clouds on the horizon for the fusion center program in Iowa and nationally.

A decrease in federal funding could mean a loss of training for many employees, Porter says, which could lead to the types of abuses civil liberties activists fear.

“What you run the risk of is people doing this work without the proper training, and then we have the problems we have had in the past,” he said. “I think fusion centers are a good way to spend money, because they can help in so many areas, like anti-drug, anti-gang and anti-terrorism. I think we’re on the right path. I just hope we don’t take a step backward.”

Rudolph said losing funding could be a major blow to law enforcement in Iowa.

“What can be accomplished is really incredible,” he said. “In the past, you might have two deputies and a sheriff trying to work a burglary ring that involves multi-counties and multi-states. Now, you have 60 officers from all these counties and states going after it. It’s a huge difference.”

So if the program is making people safer, why is it suddenly having problems getting the federal government to pay for it?

“I think the further away we get from 9/11, the more we start to lose some of the urgency of this type of thing,” Porter said. “I think that’s part of it. But even more than that, I think it becomes one of many priorities for the government to spend money on. Lots of really good programs end up falling through the cracks. The hope on the ground is that this doesn’t become a victim of that sort of thing.”

See also, Minnesota Independent on fusion centers: “You don’t know MN-JAC: Anti-terror fusion center grapples with security flaw, new privacy policy.”

In “You don’t know MN-JAC,” reporter Dan Haugen found that the agency, created in the wake of 9/11 to collect and analyze suspicious activity reports from across Minnesota, is operating without an important and widely used safeguard meant to check against inappropriate use of data.

Most law-enforcement databases are protected with software that automatically keeps a record of every search that’s performed. That way supervisors can easily monitor who is accessing what information.

A records-management system at the Minnesota Joint Analysis Center (MNJAC), however, relies on employees to manually record searches. Data-policy consultant Robert Sykora calls it “an anxiety-provoking flaw” that leaves part of the system open to abuse.

Because the fusion center phenomenon has been neglected by the mainstream media, our sister sites in Colorado, Michigan and New Mexico will also report on fusion centers later this week.

Massachusetts Rep. Bill Delahunt made the remark while questioning David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, during a House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution hearing on interrogation policies, Fox News reported.

Addington said he couldn’t discuss certain interrogation techniques because “Al Qaeda may watch C-SPAN,” which was televising the hearing, according to Fox.

Delahunt responded: “Right, well, I’m sure they are watching, and I’m glad they finally have a chance to see you Mr. Addington.”

Congressman King said in a news release that he was dismayed and outraged at the comments saying, “Congressman Delahunt’s live, televised statement to Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff was an invitation to Al-Qaeda to target him.  I wonder if Bill Delahunt is ready to guard Mr. Addington’s home and family.”

Delahunt told FOX News that King has “a good sense of humor” but “under no circumstances” was he implying during the hearing that Al Qaeda may target Addington.

Here is a video of Delahunt’s comments:

Nuclear proliferation and disarmament; United Nations strategy and planning; Middle East and Asian security; emergent powers; U.S. security; all of it. Ready for download and available from one policy research think-tank that is nonpartisan and stresses a multilateral approach to issues.

And what if this public policy resource with a worldwide reach was an independent foundation located not in the D.C. beltway but in the eastern Iowa river-town of Muscatine?The Stanley Foundation (TSF), Muscatine’s internationally focused think-tank, stresses a multilateral approach to its research. For over 50 years, the group has been envisioning a peaceful future through realistic parameters and wide-ranging voices. Even more importantly, they are committed to promoting education of both the public through media outreach as well as the policymakers through conferences, collaboration and advising.

The foundation has been located in Muscatine, Ia. since 1956, when it was founded by engineer C. Maxwell Stanley and his wife, Elizabeth. They don’t offer grants and subsist entirely on an endowment fund that provides an annual budget of about $5.5 million.

Stanley’s son, Richard, has run the foundation since his father’s death in 1984. The Stanley family runs several other foundations and was in the news recently when David Stanley, a former state legislator, was accused of raiding E & M Charities to the tune of $24 million to fund his New Hope Foundation. A lawsuit brought by other Stanley family members was settled out of court in January.

Describing their mission as active global citizenship and TSF has influenced foreign policy decision-making through media production and collaboration with a range of groups.

TSF director of policy analysis and dialog Dr. Michael R. Kraig was in Iowa City last week to moderate a panel on “Civil Society and Terrorism” at the University of Iowa Provost’s Forum on International Affairs. He sat down for a video interview with the Iowa Independent where he explained his views on three different types of terrorism: local, state-sponsored, and transnational.

Kraig believes there’s a gap between “what the public believes our foreign policy should look like in broad terms and the specifics of what our legislators are doing on Capitol Hill.”

He also talked about the some of the foundation’s programming and mission:

From 1980 to 2004, TSF produced “Common Ground,” a radio program that aired on over 200 NPR stations. They still produce radio documentaries, but have also started to do multimedia work.

A radio documentary called “Brazil Rising” will be released in June as part of their project “Rising Powers: The New Global Reality.”

According to Keith Porter, who is TSF’s director of communication and outreach, “Rising Powers” is designed to “spark discussion among Americans about the way the world order is changing and what it means for the United States.” TSF partners with KQED on radio projects. They will launch a “Rising Powers” Web site that will grow as more countries are profiled. India and Turkey are in line for coverage after Brazil.

Last year, TSF’s series of dialogues called “Bridging the Foreign Policy Divide” brought together emergent liberal and conservative thinkers. In one pairing, unpaid advisers for Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama co-wrote “The Next Intervention,” an editorial in the Washington Post. A longer version of their collaboration, “America and the Use of Force: Sources of Legitimacy,” was collected with nine other liberal/conservative conversations in a book. The series was described as “an alternative to the distortions and oversimplifications of today’s polarizing political environment” and largely succeeded in painting otherwise polemical arguments into workable solutions.

Porter said that the detailed policy work usually comes first and is followed by public outreach and a media campaign. Currently, the foundation is conducting a U.S. nuclear policy review to be ready for the next president’s administration. When the policy plan and report is complete, TSF will produce information to be disseminated through media channels, public speakers, citizen groups and other communications.

Another project will form a basis for a northeast Asian security group where none currently exists. Porter said, “There is no permanent security alliance like ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations).” So TSF will “take what happening in the Six-Party Talks and turn that into a regional association like ASEAN.” He said this project is typical of the TSF mission of “trying to get countries to talk to each other [through] multilateral solutions.”

Porter said he’d like to see:

“American leaders and American media take our global connections more seriously. People who work on foreign policy issues all the time can look at Main Street in Anytown, U.S.A. and find a dozen connections between that and the rest of the world …  that doesn’t get reflected very often in what our political leaders tell us. It doesn’t get reflected very often in what we see in the media and I think, regardless of that, it’s starting to make an impression on average Americans.

People are beginning to see how their fates are connected to the rest of the world … there is a direct one-to-one connection between U.S. national security and global security … we ought to be doing everything we can around the world to promote security, stability, better lives for people and, beyond being just the right thing to do, it will have good, positive influence and effects on us.

I do see recognition of that among people. I don’t see it necessarily among political leaders. I don’t necessarily see it among the media but it’s an idea that the public just grasps immediately. I find that encouraging.”

He summarized the Stanley Foundation mission: “We really believe that both the policy community and the public have to be engaged in these issues to bring about the change that we want in the world.”

TSF distributes a monthly e-mail newsletter, “think.” about their current program work. They also publish a quarterly magazine “Courier” that has TSF papers and policy analysis. Both are available at the Stanley Foundation Web site.

More videos available below the fold.He told the audience that “our foreign policy … our presence around the world, our empire is costing us nearly a trillion dollars every year.”  Paul, a fiscal conservative, spoke about freedom, the Constitution, drug laws, minority incarceration, Cuba, income tax, the federal reserve, and fiat currency.  Many lines brought cheering and applause particularly when, regarding foreign policy, he said, “I don’t want to police the world.”

After his speech Paul sat down with reporters for forty minutes answering questions on drug and energy policies, terrorism, and his presidency.  He denied that he would run as an independent candidate.

In this video, he talks about his first action as president and Commander-in-Chief of the military. He also discusses some motivations for the rise in the price of oil, the motivations of terrorists, and the private contractors and sub-contractors in Iraq.

Some Ron Paul supporters drove five hours to see their candidate.  In this video, Ken Van Doren of Mauston, Wisconsin, talks about the freedom movement and his long-time admiration for Dr. Ron Paul.

He talks about the consistency of Paul’s message and the reasons he belongs to the movement.

Van Doren was one of many from out-of-state.  Pennsylvania (Paul’s birthplace) and New Hampshire newpapers covered the event, as well as some national press.