A letter from Tom Cahill to OFAC, July 7, 2004

David H. Harmon
Chief, Enforcement Division
Office of Foreign Assets Control
US Department of the Treasury
1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW (Annex)
Washington, DC 20220

July 7, 2004

Dear Mr. Harmon,

This is to inform you I was a peace volunteer in Iraq last year from February 19 to March 30, 2003. I traveled there without a license from your office.

This is not a confession; it is a denouncement of you, your office and the entire United States Government for the following:

(1) The war on Iraq from 1991 to present.

(2) Sanctions against Iraq responsible for the deaths of many tens of thousands of Iraqi children of low income families due to lack of medicine for their illnesses that include those due to radiation from depleted uranium munitions dropped or fired on Iraq from 1991 to the present.

(3) Singling out for punishment Faith J. Fippinger of Sarasota, Florida, from among the dozens of us American peace volunteers in Iraq last year.

(4) The utter hypocrisy of punishing one, elderly and frail, woman peace volunteer and using fear of Iraq to extort money from taxpayers to pay defense contractors such as Halliburton, Bechtel, Kellog, Brown and Root and others that kick-back heavily to the Republican Party. Not one of us peace volunteers profited financially from our stay in Iraq while some U.S. firms are receiving corporate welfare for questionable work in Iraq.

Proof of my time in Iraq is enclosed. So come and get me! But send your enforcers at a civilized time between 9 AM and 8 PM or they just might get a pail of cold water splashed on them. I’m a cranky old man before I fully awake and after my bedtime. Since I live on the edge of wilderness, upon request I’ll send you a map to the barn in which I live.

Most sincerely,

Tom Cahill
PO Box 632
Fort Bragg, CA 95437

By JOE FEUERHERD

A federal district court judge ordered the government to show it has acted “promptly” in its suit seeking a $20,000 fine against Voices in the Wilderness, a Chicago-based antiwar group.

At a June 4 hearing, Judge John D. Bates gave prosecutors two weeks to explain why the government took nearly four years to take action against Voices, which is accused of providing unauthorized medical assistance to Iraqis in violation of the pre-war U.S. trade embargo against that government. Justice Department regulations require the government to act “promptly” against those accused of violating the embargo.

BACKGROUND: Office of Foreign Assets Control v. Voices in the Wilderness In January, 1996 Voices in the Wilderness formed as a campaign to end the sanctions against Iraq. They decided to bring medicine to the people of Iraq to relieve the suffering caused by sanctions.

In December, 1998, the US Treasury Department’s wing governing trade, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a “pre-penalty notice” to Voices (threatening fines of $100,000).

Voices responded by saying they refused to take part in any aspect of the sanctions regime (including applying for a license to deliver medicine) because the law compels us to help those in need.

In November, 2002, the Treasury Dept. sent notice that it intended to collect the fines, now dropped to $20,000. Voices replied that they refused to pay.

On June 20, 2003, the Justice Department filed a “Complaint for Civil Penalties” in federal court to collect those fines, based on trips to Iraq in July and September, 1998, in which VitW “exported medical supplies to Baghdad, Iraq.”

On September 26, 2003, VitW filed an answer to the government’s allegations and a counterclaim.

In short the defense states:
1) The OFAC regulations on food and medicine were not authorized by the Presidential directives, acts of congress, or UN resolutions
2) The sanctions regime was designed to cause suffering in Iraq and was illegal (citing Madeleine Albright’s “The price was worth it” referring to the 1/2 million deaths of Iraqi children)
3) International law and common law (the “Nuremberg principles,” that one must violate a domestic law if that law runs contrary to international law) demanded that VitW take these actions to prevent the loss of human life in Iraq, acting in the defense of others
4) The US is selectively targeting VitW because of its first amendment expressions against US policy and denying its religious freedom to act on ethical, moral or religious conscience

and the counterclaim further alleges:
1) The licensing provisions were created to offset public outcry against the effects of sanctions
2) The sanctions constituted warfare against a civilian population

and seeks
1) Dismissal of the fines
2) Declaration that the sanctions were illegal
3) An injunction against future government restriction on humanitarian aid
4) Compensatory damages (funds to be used to provide medicine to the people of Iraq) and attorney’s fees

The papers filed by Voices’ lawyers, Bill Quigley (of Loyola University School of Law), Carl Messineo and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard (of the Partnership for Civil Justice) cite numerous cases in which the government has admitted that humanitarian aid cannot be prohibited. One such case involved the delivery of aid to Nicaragua in trucks, where the trucks were left behind. The government agreed the medical aid was exempt from regulation, but that the trucks were not “humanitarian aid.”

Compiled by Dan Handelman