Students grilled by Secret Service about anti-Bush comments

[Knife]

No you dont need stronger glasses, because you forgot one part

US SS: didnt allow for legal representation and thus acted above the law and violated due process

Nazi SS: wouldnt have allowed for legal represetnation and would have acted violating due process

And you need to clean your glasses. The only source stated that said they were interograted by the SS is a teacher who was not there nor was he part of the original disscussion in the class room. It is a third person account and is vague and scetchy at that.

There is really not enough infomation in the article to do much but guess at what happened. It is more of a scare mongering article than an informative article.

[Glocksman]

The article Vympel posted is from the Oakland TV station.

I found this article at the Oakland Tribune

Secret Service grills students Oakland teacher calls U.S. security agents after teens make in-class comments threatening President Bush
Oakland teacher calls U.S. security agents after teens make in-class comments threatening President Bush
By Alex Katz, STAFF WRITER

OAKLAND -- Two students at Oakland High School were interrogated last month by the U.S. Secret Service after allegedly threatening the life of President Bush in a classroom discussion, school officials have confirmed.
English teacher Sandy Whitney said she called the Secret Service after two boys in her English class, both 16, made comments about getting a sniper to "take care" of Bush.

Oakland High sophomores John and Billy, who did not want their last names published, said Friday that their comments were made in jest. They said the April 23 interviews with federal agents left them scared and upset.

Although John admitted he made an ill-worded comment about Bush, one that he didn't want to repeat Friday, Billy said his only remark was "Bush is wacked," slang for crazy or deranged.

I wonder why the TV station report danced around reporting both the remarks that the teacher alleges were made and the admission on the part of John that he did indeed make a 'ill-worded comment'?

The KRON report was long on allegations of Secret Service abuse of power and short on any of the facts.

[Glocksman]

Forgot to post the rest of the article:

After the meeting with Secret Service agents, "I was traumatized," John said. "I was just sitting in class, just looking at the door to see if they were going to come get me or whatever."

"I was just trying to be funny," Billy said.

The way Whitney remembers it, John "said something like, 'We need a sniper to take care of Bush,' and Billy said, 'Yeah, I'd do it.'"

The class in question is at times "challenging," Whitney said.

Whitney said she called the San Francisco office of the Secret Service, now under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to ask what her responsibilities were if one of her students had made a threat.

Under federal law, making a threat against the president's life is a crime punishable by up to five years in prison.

"I wasn't saying, 'Come and get these buzzards,' nothing like that," she said. "If you say, 'fire' in a crowded theater, that's not a good thing to do. If you say, 'Let's kill the president,' you have to be prepared for the consequences."

A few hours after Whitney's call, Oakland High received a visit from U.S. Secret Service Agents Julie Pharo and Eric Enos, said Principal Clement Mok.

Mok said the agents told him to pull the students out of their sixth period class. The agents grilled each one separately in a conference room with Mok present. The boys' parents were not called.

"I can't, in my position, determine what is or is not a national security threat," Mok said. "It is unusual (for the Secret Service to come to a school), but we don't get in the way of federal agents trying to do their jobs."

California law allows peace officers to question students on school grounds without notifying parents.

"People have a right to free speech, we're not trying to infringe on that," said Richard Stribling, a Secret Service official in San Francisco. "But there is a line there."

Stribling said he did not know about the Oakland High case. He said his office gets a lot of reports of threats against the president, and agents determine which ones to follow up on. But it is rare for agents to go to schools, he said.

The boys said the agents asked questions such as, "Are you a terrorist?", "What is your opinion of the president?" and "What would you say to the president if he was here?" Both said they would apologize.

John said the questions were intimidating, and claimed the agents told him he had no rights after what he had said about Bush.

The agents asked whether his family had guns at home, and whether he considered himself a good shot, John said. He answered yes to the first question and no to the second.

Billy said the agents also wanted to know if he had a picture of Bush with a target on it, and if he had ever been to Washington, D.C.

"I was crying at the moment," Billy recalled. He has not returned to Whitney's class since the incident.

Some of Whitney's colleagues said they would have used the boys' comments as an opportunity to discuss the consequences of threats.

"To think the Secret Service would come in, it's just outrageous to me," Oakland High English teacher Larry Felson said.

Dorothy Ehrlich, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Northern California office, questioned Mok's decision not to call the boys' parents.

Legislators in Sacramento are considering a bill backed by the ACLU that would make it mandatory for high school principals to tell students they can have a parent present during on-campus police interviews.

"If they thought it was serious enough of an incident to call in the Secret Service, it should have been serious enough to get the parents involved," Ehrlich said.

[Knife]

A few hours after Whitney's call, Oakland High received a visit from U.S. Secret Service Agents Julie Pharo and Eric Enos, said Principal Clement Mok.

Mok said the agents told him to pull the students out of their sixth period class. The agents grilled each one separately in a conference room with Mok present. The boys' parents were not called.

"I can't, in my position, determine what is or is not a national security threat," Mok said. "It is unusual (for the Secret Service to come to a school), but we don't get in the way of federal agents trying to do their jobs."

California law allows peace officers to question students on school grounds without notifying parents.

"People have a right to free speech, we're not trying to infringe on that," said Richard Stribling, a Secret Service official in San Francisco. "But there is a line there."

So, appearently there was no civil rights abuse. Though if you think there ought to be, it seems that the states legislature is taking up the issue. Is it the top? Yes, but it does seem to fit what the SS has done in the past. The teacher seems to be missing some skills in discression, but the other side (politicaly) seems to be over reaching as well.

[Nova Andromeda]

--Welcome to the brave new world where even children can't speak freely without the SS coming to take them away...

[NapoleonGH]

Knife: while california law doesnt require parents to be notified, if those kids had any smarts they would have refused to talk until they had legal representation, according to our constitution this is a right all americans have, though the patriot acts dont seem to well you know follow the constitution.

[Knife]

Knife: while california law doesnt require parents to be notified, if those kids had any smarts they would have refused to talk until they had legal representation, according to our constitution this is a right all americans have, though the patriot acts dont seem to well you know follow the constitution.

True, but it seems to be a technocality (sp?). There does seem to be a serious lacking of info on both sides of the issue. So I will reserve judgment until then, but any charges of out right civil rights abuse will be scare mongering IMHO untill more info is available.

P.S. fuck the PATRIOT Act. Some things are warrented but it could have been better in seperate bills and not wrapped up in the cluster fuck that is the PATRIOT bill.

[CJvR]

US SS: didnt allow for legal representation and thus acted above the law and violated due process

Nazi SS: wouldnt have allowed for legal represetnation and would have acted violating due process

No not even there do you have any similarity. The US SS might have acted outside due process, but probably not according to later posts on local Californian law. Nazi SS was the law in a case such as this and could do whatever they wanted to without having to answer to anyone for their actions. So on the one hand you have an organization operating within the law in a functioning judicial system and on the other you have an organization operating outside even the loose reins of the Third Reich legal system. So where is the similarity?

[Glocksman]

--Welcome to the brave new world where even children can't speak freely without the SS coming to take them away...

Threatening the President's life (or anyone else's, for that matter) is not a free speech issue. The TV station tried to paint it as one, but the newspaper article revealed that the 'certain ideas' expressed by the teens had to do with shooting the president, not expressing criticism of the Iraqi war.

And it's not new either. The Secret Service has done this for at least three decades when threats are reported to them. In fact, they are mandated by law to investigate threats that are made.

Again, the First Amendment does not give you the right to threaten anyone's life. This is not a free speech issue.

The KRON report tried to spin the incident as supression of dissent and danced quite nicely around what was actually said. KRON's report never even quoted anyone who had anything to do with the incident. Instead they quote teachers who had nothing to do with it at all.

The newpaper article on the other hand, reports what the teens are accused of saying and the subseqent admission from one of them that he did indeed make 'ill-advised remarks', as well as the dissent from some of the other teachers that KRON's article noted.

The Tribune article strikes me as a textbook piece of balanced journalism while KRON's report is a heavy handed attempt to portray the federal government as stifling dissent in a classroom.


The only troubling aspects of the incident are:

The teacher's lack of discretion.
She should have just told them that threatening the President's life is worth 5 years in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. And if they persisted in it, do what she did anyway as a real life lesson to the rest of the class on just what happens if you threaten the President's life.

The reported denial of legal council.
However, the Tribune article makes no mention of this, and I frankly don't believe KRON's version of events as it's a secondhand allegation made by a teacher who has nothing to do with what happened.

The lack of parental involvement:
Apparently it's not illegal under California law, and the Oakland teacher's union has no jurisdiction over the Secret Service. Despite this, I think the parents should have been notified.

[Alyrium Denryle]

This may not be a free speech issue...but it IS a due process issue. Those students, in both versions of the article, had their rights to legal council denied.

[Alyrium Denryle]

correction: Statement retracted

[Stormbringer]

This may not be a free speech issue...but it IS a due process issue. Those students, in both versions of the article, had their rights to legal council denied.

Yeah. That's rather disturbing. Unfortunately it's something the Secret Service has a history of doing when the President (not just George Bush) is involved. You'd think they'd learn after the first fews lawsuits that these people have rights.


I'd like to see what those kids actually said. I don't buy the BS that they can't tell us anything about what they said. If they really did threaten the President then they deserve to get grilled (though the laws should be obeyed unlike what happened). Threatening anyone, much less the President, in public is bad idea.

[Glocksman]

Stormbringer wrote:

I'd like to see what those kids actually said. I don't buy the BS that they can't tell us anything about what they said. If they really did threaten the President then they deserve to get grilled (though the laws should be obeyed unlike what happened). Threatening anyone, much less the President, in public is bad idea.

The Tribune article mentioned both what they are alleged to have said and the admission on the part of one of them that he did make an 'ill-advised' comment.


From the article:

Although John admitted he made an ill-worded comment about Bush, one that he didn't want to repeat Friday, Billy said his only remark was "Bush is wacked," slang for crazy or deranged.

After the meeting with Secret Service agents, "I was traumatized," John said. "I was just sitting in class, just looking at the door to see if they were going to come get me or whatever."

"I was just trying to be funny," Billy said.

The way Whitney remembers it, John "said something like, 'We need a sniper to take care of Bush,' and Billy said, 'Yeah, I'd do it.'"

And as far as the denial of legal counsel goes, I find it difficult to believe that a principal would sit still and not speak out either during the interrogation or afterwards if a secret service agent told his kid that he couldn't have a lawyer and had no rights.

I find it very easy to believe that a kid being interrogated told stories to a wide-eyed English teacher who then dutifully and with outrage reported it to the media. That's just me though. YMMV.

[Justin]

I think I would have refused legal council if it had been offerd. If you accept and then refuse to talk to the Secret Service, then they can hand you a warrant and a subpeona to appear in front of a grand jury. I would rather take my lumps informally in a high school conference room than in front of the judge, jury, attorneys, my parents, and everybody else in the world, including the media. Remember also that if it had been taken to court, they could have determined a crime had been committed, and taken you to trial and since these kids did in fact say something, they could have been punished. As it is, all the secret service did was scare the crap out of them and let them go. I doubt they even botherd to put it on their permanent school record. The cops did the samething to me when I was 13 and decided to try shoplifting, and I am grateful that they did (not put it into my record). Anybody really think that those two agents were up to something more sinister than that? If I were the parents of those two students I would be much more annoyed at the teacher for jumping the gun than at the two agents who were just doing their job.

[EmperorChrostas the Cruel]

Justin shows some wisdom.

Do you lnow how this could have happened? One of these kids , rather than endure a "stern talking to,"with "no permanent record of the event,"
(Secret Service file catagory 3, bad taste/poorjudgement of kids/not sevious threat) someone could have insisted on legal council. This makes the whole deal an official mess. Consequences must now be faced, probably to the tune of probation/fines. Congradulations, by sticking to your principals, when so obviously wrong, you have forced the government to do things "by the numbers, by the book."

You won't like the ending on this book.

Don't make things that are not a federal case, a federal case.
There is nothing that will piss off an athority figure more than indignant self rightiousness, in an asshole so obviously wrong.
If by eating a little crow, and promising never to do it again, they let you go free, take what you can get, and lose the attitude problem.
Given that NOTHING of importance actualy occured, by not insisting on legal council, they just saved themselve THOUSANDS of dollars in legal fees.
Which wouldn't have lowered the peanalty one bit, as the peanalty was ZERO.(how not guilty can you BE?)

[kojikun]

Words fail me, so images will do.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

OMFG what is wrong with those teachers and the SS?

Seconded, Koji!

[Stormbringer]

Words fail me, so images will do.

http://history1900s.about.com/library/g ... tretch.jpg

Dude, you're moron if you think that the Secret Service was wrong to investigate that. If the US was really a facist-police state they'd have been vanished and that would have been that. So can it with the dumb assed Nazi hyperbole.

As for the no lawyers thing, Glocksman has raised a good point. The allegation doesn't seem to be well founded.

[Enricko]

To those who blame the teacher for jumping to conclusion and calling the Services, just remember all those high-school shootings. Two disgrunted teenagers may not have a chance in Hell of shooting the Prez, but they could have choosed more easier victims...

[AdmiralKanos]

I'm going to side with the right-wingers on this one. There is no such thing as a harmless threat of presidential assassination once the Secret Service finds out about it, and the notion of teenagers being presumed harmless is ridiculous in light of Columbine etc.

The bit about legal counsel being denied is questionable to be sure, but either way, any kid fucking stupid enough to make a death threat on the President, even in jest, is obviously the kind of arrogant loudmouthed pissant little fuckwit who needs the fear of Bubba put into him.

[Hamel]

If he said the same thing about Clinton or anyone else the result would've been the same~ Can't call foul on this one

[The Yosemite Bear]

Don't worry kids even "Squeeky" Fromme (Manson Cult member, and Attempted assassin) escapes every so often (Not to mention that traitor "The Falcon").

[Ted]

This is shit.

Here in Canada, I regularly say that we should knock off Bush, and say it would be good to kill the entire Provincial legislature, as well as the Federal Legislature.

Do I get hauled off by the SS?

No.

[Sea Skimmer]

This is shit.

Here in Canada, I regularly say that we should knock off Bush, and say it would be good to kill the entire Provincial legislature, as well as the Federal Legislature.

Do I get hauled off by the SS?

No.

Mabey because your over there in CANADA. Or do you believe Canada is just part of Greater Montana? That works for me too.

[Ted]

Mabey because your over there in CANADA. Or do you believe Canada is just part of Greater Montana? That works for me too.

I threaten the Canadian authorities, yet I don't get interrorgated by the RCMP, or others.