Grandview, MO – The Missouri House of Representatives met Monday to hear public testimony on the infamous Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) report. The MIAC report was authored by the Missouri Highway Patrol and distributed to fellow law enforcement agencies. For those of you who may not recall the report, read Paul Joseph Watson’s original expose.
MIAC hearing – August 31, 2009
Chair Bob Dixon began the meeting by reminding us the Missouri Highway Patrol had testified in June and will not be doing so today. From that point the testimonies began.
Darrell Castle, Chuck Baldwin’s 2008 running mate, Dr. Cisse Spragins, Vice Chair of the Missouri Libertarian Party and Alderman Mike Ferguson, National Field Director for Presidential candidate Bob Barr, were among the first to testify. Here are the snapshots of their testimony.
Darrell Castle’s testimony
- Fusion Centers should be disbanded, Department of Homeland Security states there are 72 funded fusion centers which received $254 million from 2004-2007. When power is centralized and consolidated, corruption is ineviteable.
- Terrorist is such a strong word. Who is the real threat? Anymore, the political opposition is deemed the threat.
- The war on terror, how does that work? We've been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan for 8 years. I mean in WWII we beat Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy and the Japanese Empire in 4 years.
- I’m always curious when I’m singled out at the airport or see someone pulled over if the reason they are picked is because the fit somekind of profile or is it random? I think a lot of people want to know the answer.
After his testimony, Rep. Tishaura Jones made the following statement, “You talk about being singled out, it’s going to be hard for me to take that back to my neighborhood when people are being pulled over and questioned and harrassed because of the color of their skin. I mean where is the outrage for that?”
Castle responded, “So what I’m hearing from you is because one group was profiled and harrassed, it’s ok to turn the tables and have someone else get screwed? Well, my advice to you is to create the outrage yourself. We are all in this thing together. But all you have to do is call me up, I’ll come create the outrage with you.”
Dr. Cisse Spragin’s testimony
During the course of Spragin’s testimony, she shared a story about her encounter with an anarchist group at the End the Fed Rally.
- My group was at the “End the Fed Rally” and there were a bunch of different groups there. And there was this group of anarchists who started talking to us. And then they tried to recruit us or have us join their group. Then they started telling us we should start some kind of trouble. Later we overheard them saying they couldn’t even get us to jaywalk. (Later Dr. Spragins elaborated on this incident, the details are near the end of this article.)
- Police are here to protect the citizens, not to protect the government from the citizens.
- I would also like to point out how the DoD now considers protesting as “low-level terrorism.” (page 5 on this pdf)
MIAC hearing – June 10, 2009
Missourinet.com reported on June 10 the Missouri Highway Patrol plans on discontinuing the writing of strategic reports. Missourinet says,
"There is a good probability we will not see too many more documents similar to the controversial Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) report that suggested certain individuals or group members might be likely to engage in unlawful activities." That's the word from Missouri State Highway Patrol Lieutenant Dave Hall, the Director of MIAC, in comments made to a Missouri House committee that held its first meeting Wednesday at the State Capitol.
"The strategic-type reports as you're referring to," Hall told the committee. "They are no longer being produced by the Missouri Information Analysis Center. We are not currently working on strategic reports and we are not going to be working on strategic reports." (source Missourinet)
He went on to say they would utilize other intelligence reports from agencies such as the FBI.
Commentary
This was the 3rd of 4 scheduled hearings. The last hearing reportedly was 4.5 hours and I'm sure some of the Reps felt as if they were not going to hear anything remotely original yesterday. However, that does not excuse the arrogance displayed by several committee members. There were a few reps who visibly did not want to be there and their actions supported that. One Rep. imparticular couldn't take the time to look up at the witness for more than a few seconds because he was too busy checking his email on his phone and reading other documents.
Thankfully not all were like that. Most had their hearts in the right place, asked questions and sought solutions.
Update
I later contacted Dr. Spragins for more details on the incident. Here is what she said:
They described themselves as 'Anarchists'. I spoke to one of them and took the literature they were handing out. I confirmed with them that they did not believe in property rights, hence Left Anarchists (versus Market Anarchists / Anarchocapitalists). Their literature had clearly been written for our group, as it mentioned Mises and Rothbard etc, but when you read it, you realized they didn't know what they were talking about. They were young guys, and looked like what you might expect young Left Anarchists to look like. They were there for the bulk of the Rally. The 'jaywalking' comment was in relation to their trying to get us to disrupt traffic, rather than just staying on the sidewalk. (Dr. Spragins 09/1/09)
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