A Giraffe has been sighted
in IL |
Jack Ryan of Peoria, Illinois was an FBI agent for 22 years, a revolver-toting agent with a perfect record that included such dangerous activities as recruiting and operating nine top-level informants in the Mafia. Ryan loved his work and was highly valued by the Bureau. Then he was given an order he had to refuse. Eleven military recruiting offices in Chicago had found their door locks jammed; one had a broken window. A leaflet from Brian Willson describing the Veterans’ Fast for Life was found at the scene. The FBI’s Terrorist Task Force described th incident as part of “an organized conspiracy to use force/violence to coerce the United States government into modifying its direction” and used the term “terrorists” to describe the perpetrators. Ryan knew and respected one of the men seen leaving the scene of the crime and he had been reading about Willson’s group and their efforts to stop US intervention in Central America. “They were Vietnam, Korean and World War II vets in a total hunger strike,” Ryan told us. “I was impressed with them, willing to give up their lives in a non-violent protest against violence.” Ryan knew these men weren’t terrorists. He thought the total damage of the Chicago action might amount to $1,000, something the over-worked FBI would ignore if it had been done by kids pulling off a prank. Calling it terrorism meant that the offenders would get serious prison terms and Ryan was being asked to find them so the process could begin. He was within 18 months of retirement. “I had to choose whether to follow my conscience or not… But I felt very strongly that what I was being told to do was wrong. Then I decided, I’m going to take a stand, regardless of the consequences…” Just before close-of-business November 28, 1986, he put a formal memo refusing to obey the order into his outbox and left the office immediately, afraid he might change his mind and retrieve it if he stayed. “I could have sent a memo through channels protesting the directive, but no one would have paid any attention. I had to refuse the order to get them to see how serious it was.” Ryan traces the roots of his refusal to the US Catholic Bishops’ 1983 Pastoral Letter on War and Peace. The letter got him thinking about what he would do if the FBI ordered him to do something against his conscience. A member of Pax Christi and a student of non-violence, Ryan came to believe that US actions in Central America were “violent, illegal and immoral.” When the fateful order came, he based his refusal to obey on his religious convictions. “Investigating this as domestic terrorism is absurd,” Ryan says. “I’m a loyal agent and American. I don’t think what I’m doing is anti-American. I’m taking a stand now because what our government is doing in Central America is wrong… When this order came, I couldn’t just say, ‘Oh, that’s the State Department’s problem.’ Suddenly it was in my lap. I was being asked to get involved.” |
Ryan wasn’t willing to sidestep. “I don’t believe in neutrality. Being neutral means going along. The FBI has become an essential part of our foreign policy and all parts of the government need to cooperate to keep a policy going.” In August of ’87, after months of strong suggestions that he reconsider, Ryan was fired. He asked to be allowed to serve his last few months before retirement. The Bureau swore him to secrecy about his dismissal and promised to re-instate him. But the firing was not rescinded. He appealed to the Federal Merit Systems Protection Board. At a January hearing, the FBI’s attorney said that the FBI required “instinctive obedience” of all orders, that the Bureau couldn’t last if agents were able to refuse orders on moral grounds. Ryan’s attorney pointed out that “instinctive” also meant “blind.” Blindly following orders was ruled out as a defense in the war crimes trials at Nuremberg—the allied court ruled that even military line officers could not abjure personal responsibility in the face of an immoral order. The Board ruled that Ryan was the victim of religious discrimination, but that there was no way the FBI could accommodate his acting on his religious principles. Agents in other cities have indeed taken positions of conscience against the Bureau’s investigations of “domestic terrorism.” Ryan thinks the days of blind obedience are ending. Ryan is doing lectures and is teaching a class on non-violence at Bradley University. He is appealing his case. July, 2003 Update Recent news reports led us to call Giraffe Jack Ryan for an update. Ryan was fired and lost his entire pension. Commenting on new federal moves under the Patriot Act’s mandate to counter terrorism, he has this advice for peace workers in any gathering: assume there are government agents there, and resist any and all pressure to do anything that could be construed as violent. Ryan says it’s not just in the US that government is making new moves to control the population, “It’s happening all over the world, and the technology available makes it truly frightening.” Ryan has successfully reconstituted his own life, working for years with Pax Christi as a peace activist himself, and at a Catholic Worker shelter for the homeless. He thinks being a whistleblower now is even harder than it was when he did it. “But I’d do it again.” |
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