Gen. Hayden's Glass House

Former National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden should not throw any more stones, lest his own glass house be shattered. His barrage Friday against truth-teller Edward Snowden and London Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald invited a return rain of boulders for Hayden committing the same violations of constitutional protections that he is now excusing.

Writing as "CNN Terrorism Analyst," Hayden read from the unctuous script previously used by "Meet the Press" host David Gregory on June 23 when he questioned Greenwald's status as a journalist. Hayden claimed Greenwald deserves "the Justice Department's characterization of a co-conspirator."

But the principal target of Hayden's ire was Snowden. After lumping him together with despicable characters like CIA's Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen of the FBI, and others who spied for the U.S.S.R. - and then disparaging "leakers" like Bradley Manning - Hayden wrote, "Snowden is in a class by himself."

But it is Michael Hayden who is in a class by himself. He was the first NSA director to betray the country's trust by ordering wholesale violation of what was once the First Commandment at NSA: "Thou Shalt Not Eavesdrop on Americans Without a Court Warrant." Not to mention playing fast and loose with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.

While Hayden has implicitly offered a second-grader kind of excuse, that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney "made me do it," that does not let Hayden off the hook.

I have found it helpful lately to read the one-sentence Fourth Amendment during TV and radio interviews in order to provide necessary context and a backdrop against which viewers/listeners can gauge how the recent revelations about NSA operations comport, or do not, with the strictures in the amendment. Thankfully, the language is pretty straightforward and specific:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Peer Review

Former NSA directors are not normally given to criticizing the performance of their successors. We know, however, about the passionate disapproval with which two of Hayden's predecessors reacted to the revelations in the Dec. 16, 2005 New York Times article, "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts," by journalists James Risen and Eric Lichtblau.

Risen had ferreted out explosive information on eavesdropping (and other highly questionable operations) several months before the 2004 presidential election, disclosures that would have given American voters some important information regarding whether Bush deserved reelection or not.

But the Times, in its wisdom, acquiesced to the Bush administration's demands that the story be spiked - not because the article was inaccurate, but precisely because it was so accurate, and embarrassing. The White House gave the Times the familiar warning that disclosure would "damage national security."

But as 2005 drew to an end, the newspaper could wait no longer, since Risen's book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, was already in galley and about to be published. The book contained, literally, chapter and verse on the illegal activity authorized by NSA Director Michael Hayden at the behest of Bush and Cheney. (And given the way court decisions are going these days, it is seeming more and more likely that James Risen is headed for jail if he insists on the First Amendment rights of a journalist and continues to refuse to divulge his sources.)

When the Times finally published the story in December 2005, the Bush administration scrambled to defend the warrantless eavesdropping, a demonstrably gross violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) expressly forbidding eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant. The White House immediately asked Hayden, then Deputy Director of National Intelligence, to play point man with the media, helping hapless Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defend the indefensible.

Hayden's perfidy was too much for Gen. Bill Odom, who had been NSA Director from 1985 to 1988. Odom was seething as he prepared to be interviewed on Jan. 4, 2006, by George Kenney, a former Foreign Service officer and now producer of "Electronic Politics." Odom blurted out, "Hayden should have been court martialed." And President Bush "should be impeached," added the general with equal fury.

Odom ruled out discussing, during the interview itself, the warrantless eavesdropping revealed by the New York Times three weeks earlier. In a memorandum about the conversation, Kenney opined that Odom appeared so angry that he realized that if he started discussing the still-classified issue, he would not be able to control himself.

Why was Gen. Odom so angry? Because he, like all uniformed officers (as well as many civilian officials), took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; because he took that oath seriously; and because he had done his damndest to ensure that all NSA employees strictly observed the prohibition against eavesdropping on Americans without a warrant.

Also deeply disappointed was former NSA Director Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, who led NSA from 1977 to 1981 and actually played a key role in helping shape the FISA law of 1978. (Before he retired, Inman had achieved virtual sainthood in Official Washington as one of the country's most respected intelligence managers, although he was known for looking the other way - or as he put it, "pulling up his socks" - when the powers-that-be were spinning the facts or exceeding their legal powers.)

Hayden's Record

From the Bush/Cheney White House perspective, Hayden had performed quite well working with the supine mainstream media to defend the Bush/Cheney illegal eavesdropping programs. For services performed, Hayden was nominated on May 8, 2006, reportedly at Cheney's urging, to replace CIA Director Porter Goss, who had retired abruptly on May 5 after just seven controversial months as director.

So the nomination of Hayden to lead the CIA was very much on the minds of Inman, Risen and others who gathered for a public discussion at the New York Public Library that same afternoon, May 8, 2006. Participants were brought up short when Inman took strong issue with Hayden's flouting of FISA:

"There clearly was a line in the FISA statutes which says you couldn't do this," said Inman, who went on to call specific attention to an "extra sentence put in the bill that said, 'You can't do anything that is not authorized by this bill.'"

Inman spoke proudly of the earlier ethos at NSA, where "it was deeply ingrained that you operate within the law and you get the law changed if you need to." Risen quipped about how easy it would have been to amend the FISA statute after the 9/11 attacks when the American people were demanding revenge: "In October 2001, you could have set up guillotines on the public streets of America."

Attorney General Gonzales, however, knew that there were still institutional obstacles to the NSA figuratively decapitating the Fourth Amendment. At a press conference on Dec. 19, 2005, three days after the Risen/Lichtblau disclosures in the *New York Times*, Gonzales was asked why the administration did not seek new legislation to enable it to conduct the eavesdropping program legally. He responded:

"We have had discussions with Congress in the past - certain members of Congress - as to whether or not FISA could be amended to allow us to adequately deal with this kind of threat, and we were advised that that would be difficult, if not impossible."

This was not the only hint at the time that the surveillance program was so huge in scope and so intrusive that even a servile Congress, typically reluctant to turn down any project labeled "anti-terrorist," would not have blessed it. Really, could even a doormat Congress be expected to approve "Collect Everything?"

Inman's Short-Lived Criticism

By happenstance, I found myself with a front-row seat watching honor among thieves play out, i. e., how the Washington Establishment generals and admirals cover for one other. Inman's remarks at the New York Public Library had been written up by Steve Clemons in his blog, The Washington Note.

Worse still for Hayden, Democracynow's Amy Goodman showed video clips of Inman's undisguised criticism of Gen. Hayden on the morning of May 17, less than a week before the Senate Intelligence Committee took up Hayden's nomination to be CIA director. Something needed to be done ... and quickly.

Specifically, Inman needed to be called to atone for his unspeakable sin of candor - the more so since he enjoyed quasi-sainthood on both sides of the aisle in Congress. So there I sat on May 17 in the anteroom of the CNN/New York studio of Lou Dobbs, who wanted to talk to me about my mini-debate two weeks earlier with then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Iraq.

Into the waiting room rushed a breathless Bobby Ray Inman. I am then told that he has just been given part of my time, since he needed to discuss the nomination of Michael Hayden to head the CIA. I had read Steve Clemons's blog and was well aware of Inman's remarks on May 8. As he rushed to don a borrowed tie, I had just enough time to give him an atta-boy for his honesty at the library and to express the hope he would stay on message with Lou Dobbs. Naïve me!

Watching the monitor I saw Inman give his highest recommendation for Gen. Hayden as supremely qualified to head the CIA. That, I thought to myself, is how the system works. Hayden's nomination sailed through the Senate Intelligence Committee on May 23 by a vote of 12 to 3 and the full Senate on May 26 by 78 to 15.

A whiff of conscience showed through during Hayden's nomination hearing to become CIA Director, though, when he flubbed the answer to what was supposed to be a soft, fat pitch from Bush administration loyalist, Sen. Kit Bond, R-Missouri, then vice-chair of the Senate intelligence overlook committee:

"Did you believe that your primary responsibility as director of NSA was to execute a program that your NSA lawyers, the Justice Department lawyers, and White House officials all told you was legal, and that you were ordered to carry it out by the President of the United States?"

Instead of the simple "Yes" that had been scripted, Hayden paused and spoke rather poignantly - and revealingly: "I had to make this personal decision in early October 2001, and it was a personal decision ... I could not not do this."

Why should it have been such an enormous personal decision whether or not to obey a White House order? No one asked Hayden, but it requires no particular acuity to figure it out.

This is a military officer who, like the rest of us, swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; a military man well aware that one must not obey an unlawful order; and an NSA director totally familiar with the FISA restrictions. That, it seems clear, is why Hayden found it a difficult personal decision.

Knowing the Law

No American, save perhaps Admiral Inman and Gen. Odom, knew the FISA law better than Hayden. Nonetheless, in his testimony, Hayden conceded that he did not even require a written legal opinion from NSA lawyers as to whether the new, post-9/11 comprehensive surveillance program - to be implemented without court warrants, without "probable cause," and without adequate consultation in Congress - could pass the smell test.

Hayden said he sought an oral opinion from then-NSA general counsel Robert L. Deitz, whom Hayden later brought over to CIA as a "trusted aide" to CIA Director Hayden! (In the fall of 2007, Hayden launched Deitz on an investigation of the CIA's own statutory Inspector General who had made the mistake of being too diligent in investigating abuses like torture).

Interestingly, Hayden did not pass the smell test for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, who on May 25 took a principled stand against his nomination and voted against it the following day. In his brief but typically eloquent one-minute speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Obama was harshly critical of both Hayden and President George W. Bush. Obama insisted that "President Bush is not above the law; no president is above the law." His words did not ring as hollow then as they do now in retrospect.

To his credit, I suppose, President-elect Obama did get rid of Hayden - for cause, as I tried to explain in "What's CIA Director Hayden Hidin'" on Jan. 15, 2009. I ended that article with the following word of "good riddance." (It was hardly prophetic - rather a very safe bet):

"The sooner Hayden is gone (likely to join the Fawning Corporate Media channels as an expert commentator, and to warm some seats on defense-industry corporate boards) the better. His credentials would appear good for that kind of work."
(c) 2013 Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years ==from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. During the early 1980s, he was one of the writers/editors of the President's Daily Brief and briefed it one=on=one to the president's most senior advisers. He also chaired National Intelligence Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

ON MY 70th birthday, I received a gift from Yitzhak Rabin: he signed the document recognizing the existence of the Palestinian people, after many decades of denial. He also recognized the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as its representative. I had demanded this, almost alone, for many years.

Three days later, the Oslo agreement was signed on the White House lawn.

This week I received another gift of similar magnitude, obviously in anticipation of my 90th birthday, which is due in less than two months.

No less an institution than the European Union has declared what practically amounts to a total boycott of the settlements, 15 years after Gush Shalom, the peace organization to which I belong, had issued a call for such a boycott.

The European decision says that no Israeli institution or corporation which has any direct or indirect connection with Israeli settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem or the Golan Heights will receive any contract, grant, prize or suchlike from the EU or any member state. To assure compliance, every contract between Israelis and the EU will contain a paragraph stating that the settlements are not part of Israel.

A friend of mine sent me a message consisting of one word: Mabrouk (Congratulations, in Arabic).

If all this sounds a bit megalomaniac, please make allowances. I am just happy.

WHEN WE decided to organize our boycott in 1998, we had several interconnected aims in mind.

A boycott is an eminently democratic instrument, a form of non-violent resistance.

Every single individual can decide for himself or herself whether to join the boycott or not.

Also, every individual can decide whether to boycott all the enterprises on the recommended list, or exclude some. Some of our supporters refused to boycott the Golan settlements, which they considered different from the others, some refused to boycott the East Jerusalemites. A famous artist declared that he was quite unable to live without the excellent Golan wines.

Many enterprises in the settlements did not go there for ideological reasons - capitalists are not generally known for their ideological fervor - but because the Israeli government gave them (stolen) land for free, as well as all kinds of grants, exemption from taxes and other incentives. It made economic sense for a corporation to sell their very high-priced site in Tel Aviv and get free land in Ariel. A boycott may counterbalance these gains. Contrary to getting out into the streets and joining a demonstration, not buying something in the supermarket is a private affair. In a demonstration, one may get tear-gassed, water-cannoned or clubbed. One exposes oneself and may be put on a list somewhere or even dismissed from a government job.

Everybody can boycott. One doesn't need to join an organization, sign a petition, identify oneself. Yet one has the satisfaction of doing something useful, in accordance with one's convictions.

But our main purpose was conceptual. For decades, successive Israeli governments have striven to eradicate the Green Line from the map and the minds of the people. The main aim of the boycott was to reinstitute the real borders of Israel in the public mind.

We distributed many thousands of copies of the list of settlement enterprises, all on request.

The Israeli government paid us the unique compliment of enacting a special law that penalizes all calls for a boycott of the settlers' products. Every person who feels harmed by such a call can demand unlimited compensation, without having to prove any actual damage. This could amount to millions of dollars.

We asked the Supreme Court to strike down this law, but the court has been dragging its feet for several years already, obviously afraid of passing judgment.

YET WHILE we were doing this, the European Union did the opposite. It practically helped to finance the settlements - the very settlements it declared illegal.

Actually, the new measures are not new at all. The agreement between the EU and Israel exempts Israeli products from European customs, as if Israel were a European country. Israel is already a participant in the European football league, the Eurovision Song Contest and other events and organizations. Israeli universities receive huge research grants from Europe and take part in European scientific projects.

All these agreements are in principle restricted to Israel proper and do not apply to the settlements. Yet for decades, the Brussels super-government had consciously closed both its eyes.

I know, because I myself traveled to Brussels years ago, to protest against this practice, explaining to commissioners, officials and parliamentarians that they are in practice encouraging the settlements and inducing companies to relocate there. I was given to understand that they sympathize with our stand but are powerless, because several European countries, such as Germany and the Netherlands, block all attempts in the Union to act against apparent Israeli interests.

It seems that this obstacle has now been overcome. So I am happy.

IN ISRAEL, the government received the news with consternation. Just a few days earlier, they could not have dreamed that this was possible.

In Israel, the European Union is an object of ridicule. Secure in the knowledge that we have absolute control of US policy, we could treat the EU with contempt, though it is our major trading partner. A large share of Israeli exports, including military equipment, goes there.

Government leaders are now sputtering with rage. Not one single politician has dared to speak in favor of the European decision. Right and Left are united in condemning it. Binyamin Netanyahu declared that only Israel would decide where its borders were, and this only in direct negotiations. Never mind that he has obstructed significant direct negotiations for years.

Naftali Bennett, the Minister of Economy, who also happens to be the chief representative of the settlers, rejected the decision out of hand. Only a few days before, this political genius (and self-declared "brother" of Ya'ir Lapid) had announced that there was absolutely no pressure on Israel.

Lapid himself voiced his opinion that the European step was a "miserable decision."

Bennett now proposes to punish Europe by stopping all EU humanitarian projects in the West Bank. (Recalling the joke about the Polish nobleman whose Jew had been beaten up by another nobleman and who threatened: "If you don't stop beating my Jew, I shall beat your Jew!")

But the most telling argument marshalled by Israeli leaders was that the European decision was undermining the valiant efforts of John Kerry to start negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

This is the height of chutzpah. For months now, Netanyahu and his government has been doing everything possible to prevent the hapless Kerry from achieving his goal. Now they use his fruitless efforts as a fig leaf for the settlements.

The Labor Party's Shelly Yachimovich, the official "Leader of the Opposition", contented herself with repeating the call for negotiations. No hint of criticizing the settlers, for whom she has publicly declared her sympathy.

AS USUAL in such situations, Israeli public opinion started a search for those to blame. But there is no one around.

Israel has no Foreign Minister, only a deputy, who happens to be one of the most extreme right-wingers in the Knesset. The last minister, Avigdor Lieberman, is facing trial for corruption, and the job is being kept open for him. Netanyahu obviously believes that no judge would dare to convict the fearful Lieberman, after the Attorney General has already shrunk back from indicting him on the most severe charges.

With no minister (officially, the Prime Minister is filling the vacuum) and a demoralized foreign service, there could be no prior warning.

Some people claim that the European decision was actually a pro-Israeli gesture, since it forestalls a general boycott of Israel, which is advocated by a growing number of personalities and NGOs around the world. A boycott of the settlements is the minimum.

In this respect too, the Europeans have also adopted a stance that my friends and I have advocated for years.

Contrary to several Israeli leftists, I believe that a general boycott of Israel is counter-productive. While our boycott is designed to isolate the settlers and drive a wedge between them and the bulk of the Israeli population, a general boycott (called BDS) would drive almost all Israelis into the arms of the settlers, under the venerable Jewish slogan "The whole world is against us!" It would strengthen the argument that the real aim is not to change Israeli policy, but to wipe out Israel altogether.

True, there are some good reasons for a general boycott, including the historic example of the boycott of Apartheid South Africa. But the Israeli situation is quite different.

THE TERM "boycott" was coined in 1888 in a situation not dissimilar from ours now. It was about foreign domination, land and settlers.

In Ireland, then under British occupation, there was a famine. Charles Boycott, the agent of an absentee English landlord, evicted local tenants who were unable to pay the rent. An Irish nationalist leader called on his countrymen not to attack Boycott physically, but to shun him. All his neighbors stopped all dealings with him, working for him or speaking with him. Boycott became the word for ostracizing.

The EU boycott of the settlements and their supporters will have a major economic impact. No one knows yet how much. But the moral effect is even more significant.

Even if massive Israeli-American pressure thwarts or at least postpones the European action, the moral blow is already devastating.

It tells us: The settlements are illegal. They are immoral. They inflict a huge injustice on the Palestinian people. They prevent peace. They endanger the very future of Israel.

When Trayvon Martin was murdered by a "creepy-ass cracker" in February, 2012, an outraged Black America mobilized to force the State of Florida to put the perpetrator on trial. Seventeen months later, in the words of President Obama, "a jury has spoken," affirming Florida's original contention that Trayvon's death was not a criminal act.

The White House also wanted Trayvon to be forgotten. Three weeks after the shooting, speaking through his press secretary, the president declared, "obviously we're not going to wade into a local law-enforcement matter." A few days later, Obama sought to placate Black public opinion with a statement of physical fact: "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."

In the wake of the acquittal, Obama's press people have announced he'll stay out of the case while Attorney General Eric Holder pretends to explore the possibility of pursuing civil rights charges against George Zimmerman. Holder told the sorority sisters of Delta Sigma Theta that Martin's death was "tragic" and "unnecessary," but a federal prosecution of Zimmerman is highly unlikely. The government would have to prove that Zimmerman was motivated by racial animus - a fact that is as obvious to Black America as a mob lynching at high noon at Times Square. However, except for the fact that he murdered a teenager, George Zimmerman is no more provably racist in a U.S. court than most white Americans - which is why the Florida cops and prosecutors initially refused to arrest him, why the jury acquitted him, and why the bulk of the corporate media empathized with the defense.

The white public at-large shares with Zimmerman the belief - a received wisdom, embedded in their worldview - that young Black males are inherently dangerous. From this "fact" flows a reflex of behaviors that, to most whites, are simply commonsensical. If young Black males are inherently dangerous, they must be watched, relentlessly. Black hyper-surveillance is the great intake mechanism for mass Black incarceration. Zimmerman, the self-appointed neighborhood watchman, was acting on the same racist assumption that motivates police across the country, which is why the cops in Zimmerman's trial were more valuable to the defense than to the prosecution. The same goes for the prosecutors and judge, much of whose daily lives are organized around the inherent dangerousness of young Black men.

Naturally, the cops testified that they saw no racial animus in Zimmerman's actions - just as they would deny that their own hyper-surveillance of Black communities is motivated by animus. The jury, like the vast majority of white Americans, approves of the Black surveillance regime, and of those civilians that also keep an eye out for "crime" - which is synonymous with "Black males." As juror B37 put it, Zimmerman's "heart was in the right place" - meaning, she saw Zimmerman's profiling and pursuit of Trayvon as well-intentioned and civic-minded; clearly, not malicious. Something "just went terribly wrong" - an unfortunate turn of events, but not a crime. The unanimous verdict shows the other jurors also perceived no malice - no racial motivation - by Zimmerman.

In fact, white folks in general do not think it is racist or evidence of malice to believe that Black males are a prima facie threat; it's just a fact. Therefore, it is "reasonable" that civilians, as well as cops, be prepared to use deadly force in confrontations with Black males.

The answer to the question: What would a reasonable person do? is essential to American law. Police, prosecutors, judges and jurors base their decisions on their own subjective perception of the state of mind of people who harm or kill, and the reasonableness of their actions. To most white people, it is reasonable to reflexively suspect young Black males of having criminal intent, and reasonable to fear for one's life in a confrontation with such a person. "Not guilty" is reasonable, when everyone that counts shares the same assumptions as the perpetrator.

Black people cannot fix that. We cannot change white people's warped perceptions of the world, although, Lord knows, we've tried. It has been 45 years since passage of the last major civil rights bill, the Fair Housing Act, yet housing segregation remains general, overwhelmingly due to white people's decisions in the housing market, based on their racial assumptions. So powerful is the general white racist belief in Black criminality and inferiority, the mere presence of African Americans on or near property devalues the land. This is racism with the practical force of economic law. The same "law" has locked Black unemployment at roughly twice that of whites for more than two generations - an outcome so consistent over time it must be a product of the political culture (racism) rather than the vicissitudes of the marketplace.

The Brown Supreme Court decision is nearly 60 years old, yet school segregation is, in some ways, more entrenched than ever - again, because of white peoples decisions. Not only is school segregation on the rise, but charterization is creating an alternative public-financed system designed primarily for Black and brown kids. In many cities, whites can only be retained in the public schools by offering them the best facilities and programs. School desegregation has largely been abandoned as a lost cause, because of the whites' "intransigence" - a euphemism for enduring racism: a refusal to share space with Black people.

But, the criminal justice system is white supremacy's playground, where racial hatreds, fears and suspicions are given free rein. One out of eight prison inmates on the planet are African American, proof of the general white urge to purge Blacks from the national landscape. Trayvon Martin fell victim to the extrajudicial component of the Black-erasure machine.

White people don't think they are malicious and racist; rather, they are simply defending themselves (quite reasonably, they believe) from Black evildoing. That whites perceive themselves as under collective attack is evident in the results of a Harvard and Tufts University study, which shows majorities of whites are convinced they are the primary victims of racial discrimination in America. Such mass madness is incomprehensible to sane people, but racism is a form of mental illness, in which the afflicted perceive things that are not there, and are blind to that which is right in front of their eyes.

To live under the sway of such people is a nightmare. Most of African American history has been a struggle to mollify or tame the racist beast, to find a way to coexist with white insanity, possibly to cure it, or to make ourselves powerful and independent enough that the madness cannot harm us too badly. George Zimmerman's acquittal is so painful to Black America because it signals that our ancient enemy - white supremacy - is alive and raging, virtually impervious to any legal levers we can pull. The feeling of impotence is heightened by the growing realization that the Black president - a man who, in his noxious "Philadelphia" speech, denied that racism had ever been endemic to America - cannot and will not make anyone atone for Trayvon.

We have been in this spot before - or, rather, we have always been in this spot, but have for the last 40 years been urged to imagine that something fundamental had changed among white Americans. Trayvon smacks us awake.

Noel Lyons, a member of the U.S. Ski Team from 1976 to 1981 and once one of the country's top professional skiers, found herself in a Vail, Colo., hospital in the spring of 2010 after another round of binge drinking. "I had given up on myself," she would say later. Her boyfriend and sister decided she needed rehabilitative help. Because their resources were limited, they turned to the free Total Freedom Program, a Florida ministry for women and men that identifies itself as Christian.

Cate Iannello, the wife of the leader of Total Freedom Program, "Pastor Guy," met Lyons in July 2010 at the Orlando airport and drove her to what she called "the girls' house," a yellow ranch house in a nondescript neighborhood of nearby Ocoee. Lyons says she arrived "scared out of my mind" and holding a decorative pillow with the image of a buffalo on it. Because the pillow had "past associations" that could evoke demons, she was soon told to put it in the trash. Lyons walked into the living room with the pastor's wife. She met a woman there who introduced herself as Connie Prince, "the house mom"-a position Lyons herself would assume eventually. She was introduced to about five other "girls," all white and ranging in age from the 20s into the 50s, who lived in the house.

The house mom rifled through Lyons' bag of clothes. She pulled out particular garments and told her, "Well, you won't be wearing that." Prince confiscated the small amount of money Lyons had, her Ambien sleeping pills, cellphone and phone card.

"Later on I found out it was inappropriate or had accursed symbols," Lyons said of the confiscated clothes when we met at the home of a friend outside Philadelphia where she was staying.

Lyons, now 50, toured the group house with a woman named Susan. Susan, in her early 20s, showed Lyons the bedroom the two women would share. It had bare walls and three beds with mismatched sheets, three dilapidated dressers and one closet. Lyons was then taken to the kitchen, where she sat with other women at a table for prayers and dinner. Afterward the women went into the living room for Lyons' "praying in" ceremony. She was instructed to sit on the floor. The women sat in a circle around her.

"Then they make sure I had no tattoos, which are accursed items," Lyons said. New arrivals with tattoos had to be specially anointed to excise the demons that the ministry claimed were embedded in tattoos.

The circle of women prayed over her, including in the gibberish of "tongues," and anointed her with oil. The women walked through the house after the ceremony. They said more prayers in tongues to rid the house of demons. They dipped their fingers in oil and marked the doorjambs with the sign of the cross to drive out evil spirits. "It's called the Housecleaning Prayer," Lyons said. "And a lot of times they'll put a cross over the beds where our heads rest."

Lyons began to speak to me in a stream of nonsensical sounds to imitate praying in tongues. She instinctively crossed her arms over her chest. "It's like in chanting," she said. "I'm holding my heart because I believed that the enemy was trying to get my heart. So I'm always covering my heart."

She was given a rules handbook and told she had to sign an "intake form" promising to obey the community's edicts. She read in the handbook that she would be forbidden to contact anyone except her immediate family for nine months, which distressed her because of her relationship with her boyfriend in Vail. The form said she would forfeit the right to sue the ministry, which she found odd. She refused to sign the form without a lawyer. She went to her room distraught and frightened, unsure of what to do. She could not sleep. In the middle of the night she went outside and thought about hotwiring one of the cars in order to leave, but, she said, "I had nowhere to go, and I had no money. I had no contact with anyone." At 5:30 a.m. she was told it was time for the ritual morning prayers.<> "The house mom leads the prayers and everyone has to be in unison with the prayers." She called these "the paper prayers" because they were printed out on sheets.

"You say your warfare prayer, your deliverance prayer, your third dimensional warrior prayer, it'll make sense to you later on," she explained. "It's all warfare praying."

Lyons was told to go to a designated spot in the house "where you're supposed to communicate with God and have your 'David cave time' with him." Before the start of her "David cave time," Lyons, frustrated by being unable to do her normal physical workout, did sit-ups and push-ups in the living room. As she exercised, "people are just walking by, not talking to me," she said.

Lyons was told she was allowed only one cup of coffee a day. She was told that she was permitted to speak by phone only with immediate family members and only when a person of the community monitored the conversation.

Every resident, she found, was expected to be an informant if she or he saw someone break the rules. Many of those at the ministry compound had recently come out of prison and were in the facility as a halfway house requirement.

The female residents "become a posse," Lyons said. "Remember, a lot of these people came from prison. None of the people are qualified to do anything. A lot of these people are supposed to be in a house that transitions them to the real world."

Breakfast was served at 6:30. And on her first morning in Ocoee she was taken to "morning intercession," which would occur every day for the three months of Lyons' initial indoctrination. It was held in a place called the "war room" in another house on the cul-de-sac where the group owns four or five houses. The war room was open and lined on two sides by single rows of folding chairs. The men sat on one side. The women sat on the other. Lyons was told when she entered the war room that she was not permitted to talk to or have eye contact with the men either there or outside. Segregation of the sexes was rigidly enforced. Courtship and relationships could be carried out within the community only if they were approved and mediated by the pastor. Relationships outside the community were forbidden.

All new arrivals during their first three months spent every morning and every afternoon in the war room "doing teachings," which consisted of listening to recordings from Pastor Guy Iannello's Eternal Library of 800 Teachings. They were required to take copious notes. Lyons showed me a stack of about a dozen white legal pads filled with her notes. After three months, if program approval was granted, a resident was permitted to get an outside job to help support the ministry. By that time, residents typically had severed ties with most friends and relatives.

The morning routine included recorded religious music followed by prayer. There were prayers for orphans, single mothers or fathers and those who had been abandoned. Then the group prayed in tongues. She wondered: "What does this have to do with helping me with my problem?"

At 8:30 a.m. on her first full day at the compound she was taken to the office to see "Mom," the pastor's mother-in-law. She was given a lengthy form and told to circle all her "sins," such as sex before marriage, lesbianism, sodomy, masturbation, adultery, oral sex, abortion, vanity, self-pity, swearing or cursing. She circled the words that applied to her. It was only later, she said, that she was told that each of these sins was "identified as a demon."

Lyons, who during our meeting had a box of literature, videos and other materials of the ministry, handed me a tattered red book titled "Prayers." She opened the book to Page 36. I read the four pages known as the "Sin List." It included hundreds of sins, among them "loving to curse," "killing," "Baal worship" and "sacrificing children to demons."

Lyons complained to Mom that she could not speak in tongues, to which Mom replied: "Yabba dabba doo. Just start saying, 'Yabba dabba doo,' and the Holy Spirit will help you. Fake it until you make it." Mom told Lyons she was "being rebellious" and that "rebellion is witchcraft." "That was a huge thing that they played on," Lyons said, "that whole rebellion thing."

She still refused to sign the forms. She was ushered into the pastor's office to see a video called "You Can't Fight What You Can't See." All who were inducted into the community were required to watch it. She met with Iannello on the second day. He told her to sign the forms and give the program two weeks. She signed.

Because Lyons' second night at the compound was a Tuesday, she was taken with the other members of the community to Way of Grace Church in Ocoee. The eight female residents of the Total Freedom Program community sat on one side of the church, and the 20 male residents sat on the other. About 15 outsiders joined them. Lyons listened to a sermon on obedience to God. Mom told her later that God had put the message in the preacher's heart to address Lyons' rebelliousness.

On Friday nights the group held services in the sanctuary of the Ocoee Oaks Church.

During the daily indoctrination Lyons sat in the war room from 8:30 to noon listening to recordings and taking notes. She went back after lunch to sit there from 1 to 4. During the rest of the day she was confined to her house.

"I was trying to do some [physical] exercise," Lyons said. "They're like, 'You can't do that. You have to put God first. If you get done with God, then you can exercise.' "

She repeated to me the core of the pastor's message: "You came here thinking you had a problem with drugs and alcohol, but this is a Holy Spirit stickup and this is Holy Spirit boot camp. You're going to find the Holy Spirit. You're going to find your hope and your faith. You're going to find God. You're going to find that which you didn't have. You're going to be disciples of God."

"The constant theme is a chain of command, of authority, God being the ultimate authority," Lyons said, "and that he [God] assigned people to you to watch over you, your spiritual father."

"It's very much like boot camp in the Army," she said. "Pastor Guy used to be in the [Navy]. He also used to be a big drug lord. Then he got saved, supposedly. So now he has this ministry on the cul-de-sac. A lot of the programming is to get you thinking there's obedience and there's rebellion-[and rebellion] is what caused your problems in the first place. They get you hooked into a different way of thinking that your problem is demons."

"They made me get a food stamp card," she said, handing me a copy of her application for food stamps. "Then when I got my food stamp card it went to the house mom. The house mom who bought the groceries used all of our food stamp cards."

By the end of the three months Lyons was broken and obedient. She was permitted to look for an outside job. She wanted nothing to do with those who had been her friends before she went to Florida. She believed they were heathens and conduits of demons into her life.

She was assigned to work in the group's office promoting ministry events. She called merchants and asked them to donate items or services for silent auctions. She worked in the office for two months. She then took a job at a Dillard's Department store. She would work there for more than two years. The ministry took rent, her tithe-10 percent of her income-and utility costs from her pay. She also had to pay the ministry $5 a day to be driven to Dillard's, four miles away. "They [were] nickel-and-diming me to death," Lyons said.

Lyons said that those who did not work at outside jobs worked for the ministry as "slave labor" and never could save "enough money to leave."

During her time in Total Freedom Program she saw herself as a part of the ministry. She dutifully confessed all urges, defined as sins, to her prayer group. She was given greater responsibilities within the ministry, including being a house mom. She was filled with self-loathing for "everything that was natural in me." "Anything that comes before God is an idol," she said. "Exercise, my whole past experience, friends. I started to feel like I had this Job experience, this lose-everything experience."

Lyons had been turned. She was terrified of demons, which other church members said they could see around her in the form of lizards. She fervently recited the litany of required prayers. She dutifully attended the meetings and services. She imposed the rules on others. At night, during her required "Bedtime Warfare Prayer," she would repeat to herself:

Father, I come to you in the name of Jesus and repent every thought, spoken word, deed, that was displeasing to You and any uncompleted vow that I committed to.

I break every curse that was placed on me either self-imposed or put by any demonic source and anything spoken over me that was not from You.

I curse every corruptible seed that was implanted in me and I command them to wither and die and I loose myself from every spirit associated with those seeds. Allow your righteous seeds to grow and bear fruit for Your glory.

I apply the blood of Jesus over my house upon the roof, walls and floors, upon all members, possessions, automobiles, and my spirit, soul body and dreams in Jesus Name.

I bind up any spirits of terror, fear, nightmares, or torment, every mind-binding, evil, foul, lying and unclean spirit that may try to come and torment me in any way tonight and I muzzle the voice of the stranger. Satan, you and any evil spirit in your kingdom that could be in or around our properties, I bind you and drive you out in the Name of Jesus. Any astral projections or soul travel spirits that could be in or around our property, I command you, in the Name of Jesus, to go back where you came from.

Father, please send Your warring angels to watch over me and to hold back the forces of Satan and his kingdom while I sleep. Send your ministering angels to come and minister to me as I sleep. Holy Spirit please come and flow though me, giving me dreams, visions, health, supernatural rest and let me wake up refreshed. I pray all this in Jesus name.

After she moved out, Lyons' job went sour because she failed to make sales quotas. She had few friends at work because her indoctrination had made her "a freak," she said. She did not engage in what the ministry called "secular talk."

She gravitated to Christian megachurches that she now calls "sub-cults." The trauma, emotional abuse and manipulation Lyons suffered at the hands of Total Freedom Program were familiar to me because of the two years I spent investigating the Christian right for my book "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America." In the closed world of the Christian right, pastors, "disciplers" and "prayer partners" define all doubt, questioning or "backsliding" as a sin and the work of Satan. Submission to authority becomes the only proper way to serve God. Critical judgment is abolished. Religious cliches shut down independent thought. All other ways of living become a compact with the demonic. A persecution mentality is pounded into adherents, making them deeply distrustful of outsiders. It is an ideology of fear and abject obedience to authority. And all those who walk away are condemned and branded as apostates. Lyons' story is the story of millions of Americans who live or have lived inside these hermetically sealed systems of "Christian" indoctrination.

Eventually, Lyons recovered enough of herself to leave Florida. Before she departed she packed documentation of her stay at the Iannello complex, hoping some reporter would tell her story as a warning to others. Through friends she contacted me.

When Lyons drove out of the Ocoee area last week-in her 1991 Honda Civic, with some 236,000 miles on it and duct tape holding up the dashboard-it was emotionally wrenching for her. She repeated over and over to herself in the car: "I've got to keep going, I've got to keep going. I gotta get out of here now. I gotta get out of here now."

She continues to be haunted by the indoctrination. She is struggling to shake off a belief system that defined as evil her natural instincts, her thoughts, and her desires for personal happiness and independence. Her speech remains infected with the jargon of the ministry. She says her fight now is to become whole.