Feds Target Antiwar.com
by Justin Raimondo
6/2/00

Antiwar.com a "militia-related" website – what's up with that? To our longtime readers and supporters – or even to anyone who so much as glances at the site – such an assertion may seem a bit bizarre. After all, aren't the militias those guys in camouflage fatigues playing military games out in the boonies? Gee, I don't even own any military-style fatigues – and green just isn't my color. But according to Mark Pitcavage, a senior associate researcher at the ominous-sounding Institute for Intergovernmental Research, and a self-styled "expert" on "right-wing extremism" and terrorism we are right up there with all the other groups listed on his "Militia Watch" website, which is dedicated to exposing the evils of "the so-called 'patriot' movement, concentrating on militias, common law courts, and sovereign citizens, and also containing pages related to tax protesters, white supremacists, and neo-secessionists." I won't go into the details – I'll leave that to Cletus Nelson, writing in the current issue of Counterpunch, Alexander Cockburn's acerbic and indispensable newsletter ($40/year – 3220 N. Street, NW, Suite 346, Washington, DC, 20007)– except to say that this is no random nut with a website: Pitcavage is a government-subsidized nut, and not only that, but he has connections to law enforcement – the same folks who brought us Waco, Ruby Ridge, and Janet Reno's recent Miami blitzkrieg.

Pretty scary, huh?

But it doesn't stop there. Again, I won't go into much detail – I want to save that for my column – but Pitcavage is not the only government agent who has been sniffing around here lately. In brief, we have been subject to extensive surveillance by an outfit known as the "Computer Emergency Response Team" (CERT), a unit of the US Army (they have a dot-mil URL) charged with combating terrorism, domestic as well as foreign in origin, and threats to national security on the Internet. Normally, we wouldn't have noticed: we get lots of hits from military and US government sites, and I usually don't look at our hit report that closely. But it was hard not to notice the unusual number of hits emanating from a single source – so many that it crashed the software that generates the hit report (for the non-geeks amongst you: a hit report gives us the number of visitors and their point of origin). Two days running our hit report crashed, and for the same reason – CERT.

But it doesn't stop there, either. . . .

Over the past few months we have been subjected to a number of hacker attacks. Remember all the brouhaha over the "denial of service" cyber-assaults on big commercial websites – they were essentially bombarded with so many queries that the system would overload and the site would crash. Antiwar.com has been subjected to a number of such attacks over the past three and a half months, in varying degrees of severity.

Now, I'm not saying that any or all of these events are necessarily connected, other than metaphysically – as a kind of metaphor for the generally bad straits antiwar activists find themselves in. Governments and their attendant apologists have no use for dissidents, especially of the antiwar variety, and like to keep their activities under surveillance, under the general rubric of "know thy enemy."

It is, however, quite a lopsided struggle: an organization, small and under-funded by any standards, versus the mightiest government on the face of the earth, with all its resources and its bought-and-paid-for hackers. We haven't been down for more than an hour, but our recent experiences have brought home the necessity of installing extra security – and that costs money. And that's where you come in.

We need to raise $3500 in the next two weeks in order to take full advantage of our $5000 in matching funds. This will not only pay for increased security – absolutely essential if we're to provide our readers with uninterrupted service – but will ensure our survival through the coming "long hot summer" – which could get even hotter if events in Kosovo and elsewhere continue on their present course. War could break out in the Balkans momentarily – and without Antiwar.com, how the h*ll are you going to find out what's really going on? You don't think they're going to tell you, now do you?

We're reaching more people in more countries than ever before – but we can't continue to do it unless we raise enough money to pay our bills, increase our security, and do the job right. We're doing our part – keeping you informed of what the War Party is up to 24 hours a day – now the rest is up to you. To donate online, click here. Or you can send your check or money order made out to Antiwar.com to: Antiwar.com 520 S. Murphy Avenue, #202 Sunnyvale, CA 94086.

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