Executive Order 12425 Corrected

2010-2-14 09:25:00

A letter published in my local paper caused me concern. I was surprised that I had not heard of this before.

It read:

"President Obama amended Executive Order 12425 to allow Interpol (International Police) operation rights within the United States. This was originally signed by Ronald Reagan, giving certain privileges, exemptions and immunities for Interpol to operate here with some restrictions. The Obama amendment cancels these restrictions.

"Interpol is an enforcement arm of the U.N.'s International Criminal Court (ICC) and if these initial reports about the amendment are correct, we can be transported beyond our country to be tried for pretended offenses.

"One of the grievances outlined in our Declaration of Independence from Britain was 'He (the king) has combined with others to subject us to jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws.'

"If we lump this together with profiling innocent people instead of known terrorists, appointment of 30 unaccountable czars the past year, government takeover of banks and companies, stimulus money from the government, out-of-control spending, we have the beginning of totalitarianism.

"Joseph W. Felts, Boise"

JJ:

The response from readers so far is to ridicule him as being a right-winger concerned over nothing spreading lies.

This was my response.

Executive order 12425 says:

"in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), it is hereby ordered that Executive Order 12425 of June 16, 1983, as amended, is further amended by deleting from the first sentence the words 'except those provided by Section 2(c), Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act' and the semicolon that immediately precedes them."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive- order-amending-executive-order-12425

This clearly says that the purpose of this order is "to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities" to INTERPOL.

What are these privileges and immunities?

Those granted that most concerns citizens is 2(c) which reads:

"Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable."

This will allow INTERPOL to operate in absolute secrecy beyond the power of the Freedom of Information Act. No one will have power to search their records or archives. If the President or foreign powers want to keep something beyond the reach of he American people they just need to turn it over to INTERPOL. If INTERPOL did not have U.S. interests at heart they could protect terrorist suspects by hiding information in INTERPOL vaults.

It will be very dangerous to individual rights to have a law enforcement agency not controlled by our government with the power to operate in secret.

"National Review" [a political magazine] added this comment:

"Specifically, Interpol's property and assets remained (before the executive order) subject to search and seizure, and its archived records remained subject to public scrutiny under provisions like the Freedom of Information Act [FOIA]. Being constrained by the Fourth Amendment, FOIA, and other limitations of the Constitution and federal law that protect the liberty and privacy of Americans is what prevents law-enforcement and its controlling government authority from becoming tyrannical."

It looks to me that the concerns of Mr. Felts (who is not me) and others has some validity.

(End of my response.)

If any readers here at The Keys have any other light or thoughts on this I'd be happy to hear it.