After the CIA claimed that she was committing sedition for the enemy (Hezbollah) she was imediately removed from her position. Then the media began to attack her. She was coerced into admitting her guilt, then (for obvious reasons) her citizenship was revoked.
After new prosecuters looked into her case, they discovered that she was clearly innocent. This was a huge embarressment for the CIA; but it was nothing compared to what has happened to Prouty. Her citizenship cannot be restored, due to technicalities. Now, she faces being sent back to lebanon where many of the terrorists that she hunted would be waiting to kill her. The judge is delaying her deportation.
Love your graphic Sam!
ReplyDeletedo a Junior Theme post so I can point you in a research direction.
J. Gressel
It's pretty sad/shocking that this happened, and I'd like to know a bit more about what the "technicality" is regarding her citizenship, she completely deserves to get it back after being proven innocent.
ReplyDeleteHowever, how is this showing a loss of American values? Which American values have been lost?
This actually sort of reminded me of another incident, except this incident is relatively very minor and has nothing to do with loss of citizenship or anything like that.
ReplyDeletehttp://boingboing.net/2008/09/22/star-simpson-one-yea.html
It's basically about an mit student that was arrested at an airport and had to undergo 2 years of legal trials because she wore a jacket with a computer chip and some wires and a battery on it for art purposes while going to pick up her friend. What ended up happening was that everyone overreacted, the media (local, perhaps international, and school news) wrote about it before they had any of the facts of the story, and, because nothing makes a great story like outrage, many people where she lived started treating her differently, and she had to make a public apology and do community service (a light punishment considering she was arrested at machine gun point and could have been shot). It didn't lead to the removal of her citizenship, but she no longer felt comfortable in her community or at school and put school on hold.
Some quotes I thought were interesting:
"It's like there's not a huge improvement in actual security, but there's a large step up in the amount of acting, and theater, happening."
"To be able to make your own stuff is -- I mean, since you ask me about being an American, my perception is that a lot of the country is built on the ability to make things. It's important. You can't just buy everything."
"The biggest misunderstanding was that I was trying to create havoc... it appears maybe I put a whole lot of thought into this, and where I was going, and how it would appear in that situation."
"Massachussets dropped the "hoax device" charge... [which] is defined as... any device intended to cause anxiety or fear... [Then] they claimed I'd been a disorderly person instead, because you don't have to intend to be a disorderly person. You can charge anyone with that."
I guess these sorts of cases exemplify how the media helps blow things out of proportion, because they're all racing to break a story when it's still valuable, because no one's heard about it yet, and they don't care of the facts, as you've written about in the past. That's definitely a lost value in American society, as mass media hasn't always been the way it is. But at the same time, it almost seems like something that's a very American value in some sense, which I guess is what made me curious to start out with.