Harris vs. the Hecklers

Kamala Harris joins the chorus telling protesters to shut up, with the intelligence community among them

Kamala Harris reacts to protesters

When protesters of the Gaza war interrupted Vice President Kamala Harris during a campaign rally in Detroit on Wednesday, she admonished them by invoking the specter of another Trump presidency.

“If you want Donald Trump, then say that,” Harris said, referring to chants of “We won’t vote for genocide.” Harris continued: “Otherwise, I’m speaking.”

In so doing, Harris joins a chorus of official voices trying to stifle the protesters with familiar arguments: they’re ignorant of the facts of the conflict, that they are harming their college grades and job prospects, and now, most ominously, that they are bankrolled by (or dupes of) Iran. It seems like every authority figure wants to make protestors think twice about speaking out. Call it deterrence.

The depiction of Trump as an existential threat to democracy that, uh, trumps all other concerns is the Democratic Party’s favored rhetorical cudgel for beating back public debate. Meanwhile, another risk to democracy is brewing, one which threatens in not-so-subtle terms the same protesters Harris addressed on Wednesday, but which has received hardly any attention.

Last Thursday, 22 members of Congress sent a letter to the Biden administration demanding the investigation and criminal prosecution as well as financial ruin of Gaza war protesters, whom they claim have received funding from Iran. “We write today regarding recent revelations that certain anti-Israel organizations in the United States have received funding from the Iranian regime,” the letter begins. The revelation originated in a recent statement by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, on top of statements by FBI director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco that Iran is trying to influence public opinion.

Letter from Congress

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The letter goes on to call for the Justice Department “to criminally prosecute and pursue civil forfeiture actions against any individual or entity that violates the law by receiving funding from the Iranian regime.” It ends by urging “the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and Treasury to make public all available information, without compromising sources and methods, regarding Iran’s funding of these pro-Hamas organizations so that the American people can see who these groups truly are.”

The letter is not mere posturing. It includes a deadline of no later than August 22 and makes a number of demands for specific documents and information, including:

• The identities of specific individuals and organizations that have received direct or indirect support from Iran or any of its “affiliates,”

• Copies of banking information (called “suspicious activity reports”) Treasury has pertaining to “anti-Israel groups” that knew or should have known they received sanctioned funding, and

• Whether Treasury will “impose severe monetary penalties under a strict liability standard to individuals or entities that received such funding?”

Haines made a statement last month warning that Iran was funding some American protesters of the war in Gaza. Per the statement:

“In recent weeks, Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza, using a playbook we’ve seen other actors use over the years. We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”

Though Haines’ statement included the caveat that there’s no evidence the protesters are aware of this funding, the headlines splashed across countless major media articles and cable news chyrons made no mention of that rather significant fine print. And that’s a real problem because the vast majority of people don’t read much past the headline. 

Consider this part of Haines’ statement, buried at the very bottom:

“I want to be clear that I know Americans who participate in protests are, in good faith, expressing their views on the conflict in Gaza – this intelligence does not indicate otherwise. Moreover, the freedom to express diverse views, when done peacefully, is essential to our democracy, but it is also important to warn of foreign actors who seek to exploit our debate for their own purposes.

Furthermore, Americans who are being targeted by this Iranian campaign may not be aware that they are interacting with or receiving support from a foreign government.”

The national security state isn’t just going public with the intelligence that — my god! — a foreign government is trying to influence an adversary (something virtually every government is doing all the time, including ours). It is subtly smearing Israel-Hamas war protestors. Agree with the protesters or not, the right to protest is supposed to be sacrosanct in this country. So important is that right that the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution to protect against not just overt government attempts to shut down the exercise of First Amendment rights, but even subtler ones that might “chill” it. And that’s exactly what Haines’ statement did. As anyone who’s sat in front of a camera when the red “record” light goes on and feels a pang of self-consciousness knows, authentic self-expression is a beautiful but fragile thing: a twinkling candlelight that can be snuffed out in an instant if it isn’t protected. 

Haines’ statement followed months of pressure by Congress for the intelligence community to spy on American citizens protesting the war in Gaza. That includes demands that the government recruit confidential informants, as readers of this newsletter know.

“We know from recent intelligence that Iran is also accelerating its efforts” at election influence, Monaco added recently, asserting that Tehran is “relying on vast webs of online personas and propaganda, Iranian government actors are using the Israel-Gaza conflict as kerosene to fuel tensions on social media — with some even creating accounts posing as activists and calling for protests.”

Today, the intelligence community’s actual evidence of Iran’s funding of and role in the protests remains secret. The intimations are made, with the specter of law breaking, in effect communicating to hundreds of thousands of protestors that they might be breaking the law and that they need to look over their shoulder. Iran indeed might be trying to influence public opinion regarding the Israel-Hamas war, but to suggest it is consequential is absurd. And it undermines those who want to speak out and genuinely are aghast at the status of Palestinian civilians, the Iran smear giving government leaders a reason to ignore public opinion.

— Edited by William M. Arkin