(PEN/IFEX) – The following is a 4 April 2005 PEN American Center press release: Librarian Who Fought FBI Search of Patron Records to Receive 2005 PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award New York, New York, April 4, 2005 – PEN American Center has named Joan Airoldi, a librarian and library director in rural Washington State who […]
(PEN/IFEX) – The following is a 4 April 2005 PEN American Center press release:
Librarian Who Fought FBI Search of Patron Records to Receive 2005 PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award
New York, New York, April 4, 2005 – PEN American Center has named Joan Airoldi, a librarian and library director in rural Washington State who challenged an FBI effort to search patron records, as the recipient of this year’s prestigious PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award. Ms. Airoldi will receive the $25,000 prize at PEN’s annual Gala on April 20, 2005 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
On June 8, 2004, an FBI agent visited the Deming branch of the Whatcom County Library System in rural Washington, a library not much larger than a family home. The agent demanded the names of all library patrons who had borrowed the book Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America. The FBI made the request after a reader contacted the agency to report that someone had left a handwritten note in the margin of the book that said, “If the things I’m doing is considered a crime then let history be a witness that I am a criminal. Hostility toward America is a religious duty and we hope to be rewarded by God,” a nearly direct quote of a statement Osama Bin Laden made in a 1998 interview.
As a librarian and the Director of the Whatcom County Rural Library District, Joan Airoldi organized and guided the library’s efforts to fight the request, protecting patrons’ right to read what they wish free of government scrutiny. The Deming branch refused to provide information to the visiting agent, and the library system informed the FBI that no information would be released without a subpoena or court order. The library Board then voted to fight any subsequent subpoena in court.
On June 18, a grand jury subpoena was served requesting the names and any other identifying information of patrons who had borrowed the Bin Laden biography since November 15, 2001. At a special meeting of the Board, the library resolved to go ahead with a motion to quash the subpoena on the grounds that the request infringed on the First Amendment rights of readers; that libraries have the right to disseminate information freely and confidentially, without the chilling effects of disclosure, and that Washington state’s library confidentiality laws protected the records. Commenting on the subpoena, Airoldi said, “Libraries are a haven where people should be able to seek whatever information they want to pursue without any threat of government intervention.”
On July 14, the library learned that the FBI had withdrawn the Grand Jury subpoena.
PEN Freedom to Write Program Director Larry Siems said this year’s PEN/Newman’s Own Award selection could not be more timely. “This year Congress will decide whether to extend the provision of the USA PATRIOT Act that undermines the ability of libraries and bookstores to fend off unjustified searches of their records,” Siems said in announcing the award. “What Joan Airoldi and her staff and Board did standing up to an unwarranted intrusion by federal agents into the privacy of ordinary Americans was heroic in itself. At the same time, their success vividly illustrates why the protections states and courts have carved out for reading records are so essential.”
“If the FBI had returned not with a Grand Jury subpoena but with a PATRIOT Act order, the library would have been unable to challenge the request in court, and the reading records of law-abiding patrons may well have made their way into FBI files,” he continued. “Had the FBI secured a Section 215 order from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the search would have gone forward, and nobody, not even the patrons whose records had been examined would have known that it had happened.”
“For years and long before the USA PATRIOT Act passed law enforcement agents have shown an unconstitutional interest in what people are reading. It was librarians who helped bring to an end the FBI’s infamous library awareness program during the Cold War and who led efforts to pass library confidentiality protections in 48 of 50 states. Joan Airoldi and her staff and board acted in this great, professional tradition in a fearful time and extremely charged atmosphere. We are honored to be able to salute her and the Whatcom County Library System.”
This is the thirteenth anniversary of the PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award, which was established by actor Paul Newman and author A. E. Hotchner to honor a U.S. resident who has fought courageously, despite adversity, to safeguard the First Amendment right to freedom of expression as it applies to the written word. The judges for the 2005 award were Marjorie Heins, Coordinator of the Free Expression Policy Project at the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law; acclaimed novelist Maureen Howard; author and Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy; Lewis Lapham, Editor, Harpers Magazine; and Paul MacMasters, First Amendment Ombudsman at the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center.
