Open Letter to Harry Reid

Dear Senator Reid:

Recently you condemned the wire tapping of suspected terrorists communicating with know terrorists cohorts overseas. You compared the wiretaps to the Gestapo tactics used by Hitler to seize power. Mr. Senator you know as well as I do that Hitler was able to seize power because the Weimar Republic was unable to stop the onslaught of terrorism faced by Germany during the 1920-30's. During the post WWI period, Eastern European radical left wing organizations such as; the communist party, anarchists and Stalinists committed acts of terrorism such as bombings and arson almost on a daily basis. So when the Reichstag was burned Hitler was empowered by the angry mobs because the average German, after years of inaction, was feed up with being victimized by the radical left wing and foreign agents. In Germany, the lack of security and the systematic enforcement of double standards gave birth to Hitler and the Nazi party. Therefore the Nazi Party could not have seized power had Weimar Republic been more competent in addressing the terrorism of the radicals.

Today in America it is legal for the SEC to eavesdrop on thousands of phone calls and emails and I wonder why you and your liberal friends have not protested these clear violations of civil rights. In America today, SEC requires institutional trading firms to install listening equipment at their own expense. SEC ultimately uses these intelligence systems to enforce securities regulations without any warrant or any congressional oversight. While that may seem like a reasonable accommodation to make on the part of traders; giving the SEC’s unfettered access to spy on securities traders is a clear violation of civil rights and ultimately undermines freedom of every American. Moreover, the SEC requires the financial community to literally spend billions of dollars annually to maintain detailed records of trillions of electronic communications so that agency can conduct a "fishing expedition" whenever it wants on thousands of Americans in the United States.

Senator Reid, as you can see I strongly feel it’s not the governments role to be monitoring the hard won free speech of law abiding patriotic US citizens. But it sounds like you would afford a handful of foreign agents, in a time of war, more rights than average tax paying citizens. If you do feel so strongly on this issue, maybe its time for the Liberal Democrats in the Senate should shut down the SEC’s own spying program and put an end to the wiretapping of brokerage firms.

Senator Reid, are you and your friends at the New York Times trying to protect terrorists? You know the wiretaps as well as the Patriot Act have stopped terrorist attacks. Don’t the Liberals realize that you and your fringe left wing allies will take the blame if another attack occurs? And if the attack could have been prevented by the measured application of intelligence gathering tools wouldn’t the partisan inaction that enabled such an attack be the worst form of civil rights violation? Wouldn’t that be worse for Democracy, after all, the very Patriot act you bemoan was begot by 9/11. Post World War I German history tells us the answer is yes.

In God we trust,


Rich Tullo

CC. President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Sen. Hilary Clinton, Sen. John Kerry, Sen. Charles Schumer, Sen. Theodore Kennedy, Sen. Christopher Cox, Sen. Barbra Boxter, Rep Vito Fossella and Rep. Nancy Pelosi