Earlier this month environmental activist Daniel McGowan was jailed, re-incarcerated to be more precise, because he wrote a blog on Huffington Post that talked about the repressive conditions he and others prisoners have endured in "Communication Management Units" (CMU's) in federal prisons - special units designed to severely restrict prisoners' speech and communication with the outside world.

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For the second week in a row I am compelled to write about someone represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and more particularly by my daughter, Rachel Meeropol, who is a senior staff attorney there.

Daniel McGowan pleaded guilty to an environmentally motivated arson in 2006 and is now serving the last six months of his seven-year sentence at a halfway house in Brooklyn. My daughter got involved in his case when the CCR filed a suit attacking the constitutionality of his transfer to a "Communication Management Unit" (CMU) during his imprisonment. In these units, inmates' communication with the outside world is limited to one 15-minute phone call a week and two two-hour visits a month. Rachel described the CMUs "[as] political prisons. These people are being targeted to limit their ability to communicate with the outside world, and to limit their ability to be political people."

Daniel McGowan was swept up in a wave of "Green Scare" cases that generated a number of RFC beneficiary families. In 2010, Daniel believed he was transferred to the CMU because he remained politically active in prison and published a blog. Lauren Regan, his criminal defense attorney, with whom I toured the Pacific Northwest in the fall of 2007, noted that the only difference between Daniel and other Green Scare defendants who were not transferred was "the outreach that he was doing and the voice that he had behind bars."

The CCR's legal action recently forced the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to provide McGowan with documents outlining the reasons for his transfer. On Monday, April 1st, 2013, Daniel published an article in the Huffington Post entitled: "Court Documents Prove I Was Sent to the Communications Management Unit (CMU) for My Political Speech."  On Thursday he was seized at the halfway house and confined in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn because he'd published the blog. The BOP cited its regulation prohibiting prisoners from "publishing under a byline" to justify this action. They neglected to mention that the regulation in question was dropped in 2010, three years after a federal court had declared it unconstitutional.

This is a "let me get this straight" moment"The BOP retaliated against McGowan for writing constitutionally protected political blogs by placing him in a Communication Management Unit and then after he was released, re-imprisoned him when he exercised his free speech rights by writing an article complaining about it. Kafka is twirling in his grave.

The CCR's lawyers scrambled, the BOP acknowledged its "mistake" and McGowan was back in the halfway house the next day.

But was this really a mistake? It could be a case of bureaucratic incompetence, but there is another more ominous possibility. Perhaps the BOP knew that the regulation was no longer in force, and that his attorneys would move quickly to obtain his release, but they decided to cite it as an excuse to put Daniel through 24 hours of hell to punish him and deter others. He won a victory, but he paid a price. Perhaps one day his attorneys will through further discovery get to the bottom of this, but who knows when, if ever, that will happen.

I suspect we'll never know, but given the BOP's history and its actions, I remain suspicious. The CCR's press release states that when he was returned to the halfway house, "Daniel was provided with a list of prohibited activities by halfway house staff, which he was required to sign. The list forbids him any media contact without BOP approval, though BOP regulations only require preapproval of in-facility interviews. It also prohibits him from publishing any writing of his own without prior BOP permission. As far as we know, this is a made-up rule applied only to Daniel, in a further attempt to chill his freedom of speech."

I can't help but think, as we approach the 60th anniversary of my parents' execution, how important the publication of my parents' prison correspondence was in galvanizing the movement that fought to save them. What if the federal government had muzzled them in a Communication Management Unit? Even in the depths of the McCarthy period the government didn't consider such an action. But today, after 60 years of "progress" thousands of federal prisoners are gagged in this manner.

Authors Website: www.rfc.org

Authors Bio:
Robert Meeropol is the younger son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. In 1953, when he was six years old, the United States Government executed his parents for "conspiring to steal the secret of the atomic bomb."


For thirty years he has been a progressive activist, author and public speaker. In the 1970's he and his brother, Michael, successfully sued the FBI and CIA to force the release of 300,000 previously secret documents about their parents. He earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in Anthropology from the University of Michigan, graduated law school in 1985, and was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar.


In 1990, after leaving private practice, Robert founded the Rosenberg Fund for Children (www.rfc.org) and now serves as its Executive Director. The RFC, which is in the midst celebrating its 20th anniversary, provides for the educational and emotional needs children in this country whose parents have been harassed, injured, jailed, lost jobs or died in the course of their progressive activities. The RFC also helps activist youth in the U.S. who have been targeted themselves.


In its 20-year history, the Fund has awarded almost $4 million in grants to benefit hundreds of children.


Robert's memoir, AN EXECUTION IN THE FAMILY was published by St. Martin's Press on the 50th anniversary of his parents' executions. The book details his odyssey from Rosenberg son to political activist and leader of the Rosenberg Fund for Children.