What did defense chiefs fear?

By Jim Spencer
Denver Post Columnist
DenverPost.com

I don't remember protesters when I covered the NATO defense ministers' summit in Colorado Springs in October 2003. I remember U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's smirking rebukes of reporters or anyone else who questioned the wisdom of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

There was a reason for that.

Colorado Springs police banned protesters from the city's Broadmoor resort, where the defense chiefs of many of the world's strongest nations hunkered down to talk about battling terrorism.

Lawyers for a Colorado Springs peace group argued the constitutionality of that strategy Tuesday in federal court.

In an era when powerful people increasingly exploit the 9/11 terrorist attacks to smother dissent, the case is an important one.

Political-propaganda meisters use public safety to keep protesters at bay. So the hearing before U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch matters to Americans of all political persuasions.

At stake is a variant on the old conundrum about whether a tree that falls in an empty forest actually makes noise:

Can speech be free if protesters may speak only where no one else can hear them?

Forcing protesters to demonstrate outside a huge security perimeter was necessary at the NATO meeting to thwart potential terrorist attacks, Colorado Springs officials argued Tuesday.

Never mind that protesters from Citizens for Peace in Space agreed to limit demonstrators inside the security zone to six pre-screened people.

Never mind that CPIS, as the group is known, agreed to arrive at a pre-arranged time and to stay only for an hour near the Broadmoor convention center.

Never mind that they agreed to limit the signs they held and further agreed not to confront delegates or journalists.

"The Constitution doesn't require any of these limitations," said Mari Newman, one of the protesters' lawyers.

Just what the First Amendment requires will rest as it often does - on judicial interpretation.

Colorado Springs Assistant Police Chief Steven Liebowitz said that allowing Citizens for Peace members to stand near a checkpoint three blocks from the Broadmoor balanced the right to dissent with the need to protect against "vehicle-borne explosives."

Thing is, CPIS members weren't going to drive in. They agreed to be escorted into and out of the security zone, just as those of us in the media were.

But Liebowitz also testified that police worried the protesters might engage in civil disobedience.

"Should the six of them go in and lay down in front a motorcade, it would take additional resources," Liebowitz said.

"What if residents (living on the public roads surrounding the Broadmoor) had lay down in the streets?" wondered CPIS lawyer Ed Ramey. "What if truck drivers (delivering supplies to the resort or the neighborhood) lay down?"

It was precisely because residents and truck drivers weren't likely to oppose the government that the government let them inside the security perimeter, Ramey suggested.

He hit the nerve.

Testimony Tuesday in federal court revealed that while residents' vehicles got checked, folks who lived around the Broadmoor could drive to and from their homes with visitors who were never screened as security risks.

Liebowitz also testified that spies sometimes pose as foreign journalists, which was why the media had to be restricted to the Broadmoor International Center. If they tried to leave, Liebowitz said, they were "detained."

While I don't remember protesters standing outside the security perimeter at the NATO summit, I do remember a bunch of foreign reporters bolting from the International Center to take snapshots of a bear that wandered through the yards of nearby homes.

Nobody detained them.

So if political and policy powerbrokers must be kept safe, it's time to ask:

Safe from what?

Jim Spencer's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com .