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CIA Recruiters Expelled from UCSB Campus

by UCSB SAW (ucsbsaw [at] gmail.com)
The CIA was scheduled to hold an “infosession” for students interested in jobs with the agency. Right as the session began, four activists entered the room and began to demonstrate waterboarding, a torture technique used by the CIA. After only one minute of the waterboarding demonstration the room was plunged into chaos by a group calling itself the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army. The Rebel Clowns, joined by several dozen antiwar organizers took over the meeting room and began passing out information on the CIA’s use of illegal torture techniques and literature related to the agency’s long history of subverting foreign governments, assassinating foreign leaders and subverting democracy.

The CIA agents fled the room but were pursued by a crowd of protestors chanting, “C-I-A, Go Away!” The agents were caught totally off-guard by the direct action. Protestors were overheard shouting to the escaping agents never to come back to UCSB.
cia_flee.jpg
A routine CIA information and recruitment session was suddenly disrupted on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara today when a small group of student protesters walked in and lead a man with bound hands to the front of the room, where he was laid on a table and (voluntarily*) tortured with a CIA-approved technique used to simulate drowning, known as water-boarding. The CIA speakers were struggling to speak over the "torture victim's" coughs and cries for help, while potential CIA recruits looked on with bewilderment at the grotesquely real portrayal of torture.

UC Santa Barbara Students Drive Out CIA

UC Santa Barbara,
Wednesday, November 14, 2007

A routine CIA information and recruitment session was suddenly disrupted on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara today when a small group of student protestors walked in and lead a man with bound hands to the front of the room, where he was laid on a table and (voluntarily*) tortured with a CIA-approved technique used to simulate drowning, known as water-boarding. The CIA speakers were struggling to speak over the "torture victim's" coughs and cries for help, while potential CIA recruits looked on with bewilderment at the grotesquely real portrayal of torture.

As the torture victim screamed in terror, a large group of students, with a faction of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) at the lead, stormed the room. CIRCA members untied the bound man and pushed his torturers aside to chants of 'NO TORTURE AT UCSB!' and 'CIA, GO AWAY!'. One of the rebel clowns even took advantage of a CIA operative's vacant chair at the head of the room to begin a new, and interactive, information session with the crowd to discuss the true history of the CIA and why they must be resisted. Meanwhile, clowns and students mingled with the potential recruits to discuss the truth of the organization, and other options for those who had attended the meeting. People got on tables, chairs were overturned, and the projector screen was rolled up.

The two CIA recruiters heading the meeting appeared to be caught completely off guard. They packed up and began to leave, followed first by a few of the students who had come for the recruiting session, and then by the entire clown-and-student insurgency, which proceeded to disrupt every attempt at meeting in other parts of UCSB's U-Cen, or University Center, building, by surrounding CIA agents and confronting them with a battery of questioning and shame, making it clear that torturers will not be tolerated at UC Santa Barbara. When it was apparent that any attempt at recruitment would fail, the meeting dispersed and one agent was escorted off the university by the chanting, confrontational insurgency.

When it was clear that the agent was no longer a threat to impressionable University students, the crowd returned to the U-Cen to forcibly eject the other agent, only to discover that he had already left as well. The former meeting room was occupied and used for a networking and debriefing session, where the insurgency was able to use the energy of the event to lay down the foundations for future resistance.

*The volunteer in question was, per his request, actually tortured using the water-boarding technique, so as to give the students the necessary picture of what the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States is guilty of doing to human beings. Although the demonstration was obviously painful, he felt it was essential, and bravely allowed himself to be put through this terrible experience. Don't try this at home, and don't let anybody do it to you; especially if they work for the government.


-------------


From UCSB's Daily Nexus (student newspaper)

Students Protest CIA’s Torture Tactics
UCSB Students Dress in Clown Costumes to Denounce CIA, Follow Presenter Across Campus

By Evan Wagstaff / Staff Writer
Published Thursday, November 15, 2007

Student protesters dressed as clowns follow a CIA representative from the UCen conference room to his car near Pardall Tunnel on Wednesday evening. The group interrupted the event to perform imaginary torture methods in order to deter recruitment at UCSB.

Student protesters dressed as clowns follow a CIA representative from the UCen conference room to his car near Pardall Tunnel on Wednesday evening. The group interrupted the event to perform imaginary torture methods in order to deter recruitment at UCSB.

The clowns interrupt the CIA informational meeting to criticize torture tactics and other allegedly negative influences of the program yesterday. They distributed pamphlets on campus and used the clown theme to try to make a mockery out of the CIA.

The clowns interrupt the CIA informational meeting to criticize torture tactics and other allegedly negative influences of the program yesterday. They distributed pamphlets on campus and used the clown theme to try to make a mockery out of the CIA.

A group of several protesters dressed in clown costumes and painted faces followed a CIA recruiter last night from his presentation in the UCen to his car behind the Thunderdome.

A CIA recruitment and informational meeting was taking place in a conference room on the UCen’s lower level, when, at 5 p.m., a group of protesters interrupted the recruiter’s PowerPoint presentation by placing one of their fellow clowns on the front table, binding his hands and arms, and pouring water on his face to simulate waterboarding torture in front of the presentation’s unsuspecting audience. The group also held a mock press conference citing historical torture statistics and played limbo with a fuzzy green boa before the recruiters quickly packed up their equipment and left the room.

The crowd of a dozen clowns and almost 50 onlookers followed the lead recruiter through the halls of the UCen, up and down two flights of stairs, and out to Storke Plaza, chanting “No torture at UCSB” and “CIA, go away.” The recruiter, who did not stop for comment, said only “I’m not in violation of anything,” before getting into his car at the lot next to Pardall Tunnel.

Jennifer Bamberg, a UCSB alumni and protester, was passing out anti-torture signs to fellow supporters in front of the UCen throughout the protest. She said students should reject the CIA and cited various allegations.

“It’s the fact that they practice torture since their inception,” Bamberg said. “They had a hand in the coup in Chile in ‘73, they go into places like Afghanistan and assure opium gets to poor black areas in the U.S.; they supported crop dusting in Columbia and poisoned thousands of families’ farm supplies.”

According to third-year environmental studies major Whitney Walberg, “Community Members Against War” is the unofficial group behind the protest. The group has no set roster of members, but serves as a place for concerned students to plan action. Walberg said that the group chose the clown motif to embarrass the CIA and make a joke out of their meeting.

“The reason they feel this is effective is because they completely make the situation a joke,” Walberg said. “It takes the seriousness and legitimacy away from the CIA. UCSB is one of the only UCs that the CIA recruits at and we want them to stop what they’re doing.”

After the recruiter left, Will Parish, the most costumed of the protesters, spoke against the CIA while in character as a high-pitched clown.

“All I wanted to know was if, by Western standards, it’s OK for me to tickle you in the butt if it’s okay for you to torture people,” Parish said. “That guy was an evasive asshole.”

The protesters also distributed pamphlets detailing several instances of alleged CIA international abuses.
First year zoology and film studies major Lindsey Parker said she heard about the event through Facebook and came to protest what she deemed as unacceptable practices by the CIA.

“We claim to support a peaceful cause but then we do shady things like this,” Parker said. “There are all sorts of barbaric acts that are going on.”
§CIA Agent Confronted
by UCSB SAW
cia_infosess.jpg
The agent told us "you can't take photos" and tried blocking one photographer's camera. Just after this photo was taken he attempted to call the police.
§Torture in action
by UCSB SAW
Copy the code below to embed this movie into a web page:
Waterboarding torture technique
§"C-I-A, Go Away!"
by UCSB SAW
Copy the code below to embed this movie into a web page:
Protesters followed the agent all the way to his car to make sure he left campus with the message that he's not welcome back.
§PHOTOS BY ERIN SALDAÑA / DAILY NEXUS
by credit
Students Protest CIA’s Torture Tactics
http://www.dailynexus.com/article.php?a=15128
Add Your Comments

Comments (Hide Comments)
by mz
great action! keep up the good work at ucsb.
by Rich
This is similar to what SAW at Santa Cruz has done to military recruiters - run them off campus.

Instead of holding rallies and symbolic events students should be interfering with the university's ability to contribute knowledge and personnel for the war effort. That include counter-recruitment on campuses for all branches of the military, the CIA, ICE, etc.

Protests should only be a means to disrupting the war machine.

Good job UCSB.
by luci
It's funny to me that on other parts of this site, people are complaining about CodePink's protest at the military recruitment office in Berkeley. That's the most direct form of action that's available to folks in Berkeley to try to get rid of that office, so I say, good for them.

And I also think it's great when students protest this kind of thing and let recruiters know that they are not welcome.

Direct action gets the goods!
by mpalmer
Bravo! If I lived closer to you I would have been there egging you on.
by ucsb
If the CIA cannot recruit who will be the future information gatherers? Or do we not need the CIA and military?
by Gek
If they'd been allowed to speak, both sides of an issue might have ended up being presented. I'm glad they got shut down before the other side even had a chance to be aired. Who knows, someone might have picked "the wrong side".

So, just to make things easier, it should only be allowed that one side of an issue ever be presented, and the other side be silenced.

I'm glad to see that this idea is firmly ensconced in Colleges nationwide, and I hope it becomes part of the National expectations.

And don't worry, once this works and I get "elected" I'll be a benevolent dictator, I promise. Just keep thinking that this is the proper means for debate and discourse so it won't be surprising when I use it to silence anyone who disagrees with me.
by panchita
Great work! I second the idea that these actions should occur at CIA recruitment sessions the world over! Fuck the CIA for all of the injustice it has created in the world!
by reader
Yes, protect the CIA's right to debate!

The reality is, average Americans are drowned in the propaganda from the wrong side 24/7, so the unfortunate truth is that many DO INDEED pick the wrong side, and realize too late, such as after they have come home from Iraq and considering suicide.

Debates, discussion, information and other presentations are one way. This is simply another more direct way.

Average people don't know about any of these events --

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mkultra

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_BLUEBIRD
BLUEBIRD is the cryptonym for a CIA mind control program, lasting from 1951 to 1953. During this time the CIA authorized experiments to be conducted by licensed psychiatrists. The experiments had various purposes, including but not limited to: creating new identities, inducing amnesia, inserting hypnotic access codes in subjects' minds, creating multiple personalities, and creating false memories. The research also included placing brain electrodes in people and controlling their behavior from remote transmitters, administering daily dosages of LSD-25 to children for extended periods of time, and using electroconvulsive therapy to erase memories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
Operation Mockingbird was a Central Intelligence Agency operation to influence domestic and foreign media, whose activities were made public during the Church Committee investigation in 1975 (published 1976). The word Mockingbird was first used by Deborah Davis in Katharine the Great (1979). Deep in the pages of E. Howard Hunt's 2007 memoir "American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond," Hunt pulls open the curtain on covert history and details the existence of “Project Mockingbird,” in which print and broadcast media players were used for both propaganda and active intelligence gathering inside the United States, a direct violation of what was then its technical legal function.
---------------

But don't forget that wikipedia is a tool of the CIA -- editors are directed to refrain from blocking any CIA IP addresses.

It's an information war out there too . . .
by reader
Covert U.S. regime change actions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_sponsored_regime_change

The United States Intelligence Community is a cooperative federation of sixteen separate United States government agencies and organizations that work together to conduct intelligence activities considered necessary for the conduct of foreign relations and the protection of the national security of the United States. The Intelligence Community is led by the Director of National Intelligence. Among their varied responsibilities, the members of the Community collect and produce foreign and domestic intelligence, contribute to military planning, and perform espionage. The Intelligence Community was established by Executive Order 12333, signed on December 4, 1981 by President Ronald Reagan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Community

Wow, so a cooperative federation of sixteen separate United States government agencies and organizations that work together couldn't do a single thing to keep a plane from hitting the heart of the US military even a full hour after the 9/11/01 attacks started . . .

8:38 a.m.: The Federal Aviation Administration notified the military air defense command of a hijacking.

8:46 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 11, carrying 92 people from Boston to Los Angeles, crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

8:55 a.m.: Flight 77 began turning east, away from its intended course.

9:10 a.m.: Flight 77 was detected by radar in West Virginia, heading east.

9:25 a.m. :The FAA notified military air defense that Flight 77 was headed toward Washington.

9:37 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 77, carrying 64 people from Washington to Los Angeles, crashed into the west side of the Pentagon.
http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/pentagon/attack/wapost_timeline.html

Debate the issue, or just get them off the campuses. You decide.
by Not a dumb-ass liberal
All this bullshit about hearing both sides of an issue totally misses the point. Only liberal jack-ass types who live in the USA and have never been subject to political violence talk this kind of gibberish.

The issue here is about power and violence. The CIA and US state are killing and torturing people. This needs to stop, by any means necessary. These students kick ass! They shut down the CIA, nonviolently at that! They fulfilled their responsibility as citizens of a local community and powerful institution (the UC) and carried out a small but real act of resistance against militarism, secrecy and torture.

The idea that the CIA or military deserves "free speech" is foolish.

Wake up people, before it's too late.
by Aaron Aarons
Lets arrest ALL present and former CIA agents (except for "turncoats" like Phil Agee) and put them on trial for their crimes. Then let their trials be broadcast and/or webcast, so we can hear both the witnesses to their crimes and their individual and collective defenses against the charges.
by Louis Korn (loukorn [at] hawaiiantel.net)
Freedom of Speech entitles everyone to a hearing EXCEPT those proven by credible human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, International Red Cross, and journalists of proven integrity, like Bill Moyers and several others whose names momentarily escape me, who have shown that our whole executive branch of government and its appointees, are lying thugs who are entitled to a hearing only when brought to trial in criminal courts where they may contest the volumes of evidence brought against them. Otherise allowing them free speech subjects everyone else to poisonously deceitful propaganda, as harmful as shouting "FIRE!" in a crowded theater.
by N
It doesn't appear that the CIA representative made any attempt to speak--aside from calling the police and walking away. Apparently, he didn't feel what he had to say--or the audience--was worth his time. Lack of respect for public dialog (other than as a propaganda) is a running problem with them.

>>
If they'd been allowed to speak, both sides of an issue might have ended up being presented. I'm glad they got shut down before the other side even had a chance to be aired. Who knows, someone might have picked "the wrong side".

So, just to make things easier, it should only be allowed that one side of an issue ever be presented, and the other side be silenced.
<<
by Arron
I hope that the next time YOU people try to exercise YOUR right of freedom of speech, some radical protestors come along and shoo YOU away! You have the right to protest PEACEFULLY. Forcing someone off of property and not allowing them to speak IS TERRORISM in the most raw form! YOU ARE TERRORISTS you idiots! You did EXACTLY what terrorist dictators do in their countries. It is our "military" that affords you the right of freedom of speech. I don't now where you idiots get your facts or antics from, but I am willing to bet it was at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box! I hope you can all say these words; "Hello, may I take your order?", because idiots like you that don't "get it" will all be working at places like McDonalds serving us people that DO get it!!
by Shay
In order to be heard, and to be taken serious, one must act responsibly, like an ADULT. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, because we are the land of free speech, but these students took their right to the extreme. Instead of acting like adults, they threw fits like children and terrorized their university. Now, instead of making a positive impact for their cause, they have made themselves look like radical fools. Points don't have to be made through outrageous tactics and shouts; use your intellect instead of making your generation look bad!
by Me too
Their whole protest was so unnecesarry. Just because they dont support the CIA, doesnt mean they should go and block others from hearing or seeing what they chose. The people that attended should have been given the choice to make their own decisions. Instead, they watched a bunch of clowns peform.
by David
Arron, Shay, and "me too",

You don't get it. The CIA is killing people and torturing them. What the students did was powerful. They actually prevented a CIA rep from recruiting people.

See, your real problem with their action is that it actually accomplished something. You'd like to see people just hold signs and rant at a distance so that they can be marginalized and ignored. But when people actually do something you get upset.

I'm with the students. What the CIA is doing is terrorism (http://www.serendipity.li/cia/cia_terr.html). They got shut down at UCSB and were unable to fulfill their goal of recruiting more agents for the US empire's "intelligence" apparatus.

It's too bad people don't understand that this is all ultimately about power. Students flexed their power down there - and it was nonviolent, nobody was harmed (the CIA agent was only shamed with clowns.


by dont think so
If you dont agree with the CIA , fine. But what about the people that do agree with them and want to be apart of their org? Who are you to filter the recruitment? So people at the campus can only learn about organizations that you all approve of?
by dad_of_a_princess
So, "dont think so", how about inviting all the colors of crazies to the campus: Nazies, KKK, KidsPornLovers. Let them all to recruit. Considering that the legality of CIA, esp. the use of Fed taxes to run it, is under the question, why not use grass root campaign to oppose them. Let them show the real face. Are you going to wait when you fellow students are going to get free tickets on unmarked aircraft on the way to Egypt torture chambers?
by Arbiter
Who are we!? We're United States Citizens, damnit. The leadership needs to understand that they're answerable to us, and it's our job to reign them in.
by MelSeattle
As an older person (older than college age), I appreciate the energy that these young people bring to addressing at least one of the many problems this nation is facing... the older you get and more you learn, the more bewildering it gets, and harder to act.

If there was ever a time for actions like these it is NOW!!!!

Think Civil Disobedience, Thoreau!

Thank you UCSB Clown Army!!!
by Appalled
How ironic is it that UCSB's sophomoric "rebel clowns" were so eager protest human rights abuses by abusing another's freedom of speech? And then to harangue the CIA officer (to call him a CIA "agent" only further exposes the protesters' lack of attention on the subject) all the way to his car! Is that what democratic, open dialogue has been reduced to at UCSB?

The other great irony is that the protesters' misguided little temper tantrum may actually achieve the effect they desired, albeit for the wrong reason. Generally, the CIA tries to recruit very smart people; if the protesters are any indication of the intellectual quality of UCSB students, the CIA's recruiting efforts might be more wisely applied at better universities.
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