The Biden administration has stopped telling Americans which foreigners they can debate

Can the US government use counterterrorism as an excuse to stop Americans from talking to foreigners? Until this week, the Biden administration seemed to think so. Then the New York-based nonprofit Foundation for Global Political Exchange tried to hold a conference in Lebanon, the U.S. Treasury Department argued that it had to ban certain Lebanese speakers because they were on the terrorist list or under other U.S. economic sanctions.

Even though no money or goods changed hands, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC). wrote in 2022 it said that “providing a platform for (the sanctioned individuals) to speak” was considered a “service” and therefore illegal for Americans.

But after a lawsuit, the ministry withdrew. On Tuesday, as part of a settlement agreement, OFAC published a letter stating that merely giving a speech “is not a service prohibited by US sanctions and therefore does not require authorization.”

The decision came on the same day that Congress crushed another attempt to give the Treasury Department censorship powers in the name of the fight against terrorism. On Tuesday evening, HR 9495 failed to win the two-thirds majority needed to pass the House of Representatives. The bill would have allowed the Treasury Department to make any nonprofit organization a “terrorist supporting organization“Without providing evidence.

The Foundation for Global Political Exchange grew out of the Beirut Exchange, a series of conferences started by American researcher Nicholas Noe in 2008, when Lebanon was on the brink of civil war. The Exchange attracts a who’s who of Lebanese political figures from across the political spectrum, and the Foundation has since established sister conferences in Armenia, Tunisia, Iraqi Kurdistan, Libya and Yemen, all countries facing extreme political divisions.

While many of the Exchange events have dry, academic titles, things like “Interrogating the concept of negligence and responsibility” or “Sectarianism and the ecumenical framework“-the conferences have allowed some serious rivals to debate their positions nonviolently. The Beirut Exchange has attracted speakers from Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party and militia that the United States considers a terrorist group.

It has also hosted fierce rivals of Hezbollah, including former Maronite Christian militia commander Samir Geagea, and people later believed to have been killed by Hezbollah, including journalist Lokman Slim, who was shot in 2021 while reportedly trying to plot an attack commit. Hezbollah defector in contact with the US government, and former Treasury Secretary Mohamad Chatah, who was murdered by a car bomb in 2013.

So it went through the Middle East. The Yemen Exchange, held on Zoom, involved the Saudi ambassador to Yemen as well as representatives of the Houthi movement fighting Saudi Arabia. U.S. officials and other foreign diplomats have also reportedly attended frequent visitors at Foundation for Global Political Exchange events.

“The crucial thing is that we don’t have love parties,” says Noe Rodelisting all the rival political figures he has received. “I would say that 20 percent of our speakers are in prison or have been murdered and a third of our speakers blame the other third for the hardship and violence they, their party and their country have suffered over the years. ”

Noe’s organization believed these conferences were protected by the First Amendment, but “concerned how broadly OFAC might interpret its regulatory authority when reports emerged that the videoconferencing service Zoom abruptly canceled several academic events involving Leila Khaled , stopped’. former Palestinian hijackeraccording to the court case.

That’s why they asked permission. The Foundation for Global Political Exchange informed OFAC that its 2022 Beirut conference would have five speakers under US sanctions: former Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, MP Jamil Sayyed, Hezbollah MP Ali Fayyad, former Hezbollah MP Ammar Moussawi, and Hamas spokesman Usama Hamdan. Bassil and Seyyed are subject to corruption sanctions, and the others are subject to terrorism sanctions.

“While we believe that our proposed activity is not prohibited by any of the sanctions regulations, a Licensing Division official has instructed us to apply for a specific license,” the foundation wrote in a message. Letter April 2022 request that such a permit be granted. OFAC denied the request.

It would not be the first time that US authorities have used economic sanctions to censor speech. In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that a group of American peacekeepers could not meet with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Tamil Tigers, two foreign rebel groups considered terrorists by the US government, to teach them how to do so.resolve disputes peacefully.” Each This kind of advice, the government successfully argued, would count as training terrorists.

And in 2021, the US Department of Justice to block the websites of 33 foreign news channels, arguing that the news channels were affiliated with the Iranian government so hosting them on U.S. servers would violate sanctions. (Like me exposedsome news broadcasts were actually present chances with the Iranian government, but there is no transparency or due process for these types of actions.)

However, the Biden administration introduced a new way of thinking in the Beirut Exchange case. The foundation had no intention of giving the speakers money, goods or training, just the chance to sit in a chair and answer questions. OFAC has argued as much before an American audience itself was something of value and therefore fell under the sanctions.

The consequences for press freedom were quite disturbing. In theory, the government could even prevent American journalists from speaking to unwanted foreigners. I published myself a big scoop in 2021 – that the US military likely encountered PKK fighters in Iraq – based on a PKK commander’s response to my questions.

The work of journalists and academics requires talking to “torturers, murderers, terrorists, despots, gang members, thieves and other miscreants” and “hearing views that many (often even ourselves) find vile, reprehensible or abhorrent.” say Monica Marks, professor of Middle East politics at New York University and member of the foundation.

The foundation sued the Biden administration in January 2023, and Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute took up the case. The Biden administration made several requests for extensions of time, but then relented. She withdrew her claims in a Friday letter and settled the case on Tuesday.

“This settlement is an important victory for freedom of expression at a time when governments around the world are exploiting national security laws to suppress legitimate political discourse. The First Amendment protects the right of Americans to interact with people of other countries — to talk to them, hear from them, and engage them in discussion and debate,” Knight Institute attorney Anna Diakun said in a speech statement. “The government has no authority to dictate which voices and ideas Americans can hear.”