The City of Seattle estimates its direct WTO costs to be around $10 million—mostly police overtime—while state, county, and suburban agencies face mutual aid costs of $6 million. (Short on funds, Seattle WTO planners opted not to initially mass a security force using police from other areas, instead realizing they could summon help through the mutual aid pact, leaving the three dozen other jurisdictions to scramble to pay their own costs; King County and the Washington State Patrol were each stuck with tabs totaling more than $2 million.)
The lawsuits and claims filed in WTO's wake range from several dollars to $1.7 million by a man claiming false arrest, and it's reasonable to assume the city will spend and pay at least a few million to settle claims. Having failed their mandate to ensure the city would not pay for a party thrown by a private group, the mayor and council are hoping the state's congressional delegation will be able to wrangle offsetting US funds (pushed by Senators Slade Gorton and Patty Murray, a $5 million payment is working its way through Congress). The State Department, feeling deceived, is threatening no more WTOs for Seattle!
Rick Dahms
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Why not sue the bastards?
Why not indeed? In addition to its pledge to the State Department, the Washington Council on International Trade promised the city it would pay Seattle security costs of $1.5 million but has tendered only $320,000. In its first printed informational guides for Seattle Host Organization officials, WCIT also made these statements: "SHO is a division of the WCIT" and "WCIT is the only legal and financial entity involved in hosting the Ministerial. All SHO financial and legal obligations reside with the Council."' What part of all doesn't City Hall understand? A WTO Accountability Review Committee panel has also found that WCIT "breached its oral commitment to the city to pay for the city's security costs." Tab for Ms. Davis' billionaires, please.
Is there anything we still don't know?
Among other things, we aren't likely to learn exactly what Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, trapped in her hotel room, shouted over the long distance line to DC. ("Gas those pinko dupes!" maybe?) What were the orders Clinton's security advisors gave to local officials to quell the protests? What did the Justice Department think about Seattle's security planning and the mayor's faith that WTO would be a nonviolent assembly? So far, those answers are lacking in part because the city has not seriously sought them. Review panel director Alec Fisken says he'd like more documents if he had his druthers (federal agencies such as the Justice and State Departments are notoriously slow to respond to document requests). But the city's reviews have not included detailed queries to or responses from federal officials for much the same given reason they claim to have chosen not to review WTO civil rights violations: not enough time, people, and money to get into it. The city is willing to spend millions hosting WTO, but comparatively little reviewing why we shouldn't have.
Would probing the federal role in WTO really reveal much?
We'll let you know if we ever get any response to some of our Freedom of Information Act requests. But clues to the deeper federal role pop up now and then. In a March 1999 letter, for example, FBI agent Bob Houston informed the SPD about the formation of a high-level task force, the WTO Joint Interagency Intelligence Support Element group, which consisted of "all relevant public safety, consequence management [teams] and, where appropriate, military agencies." Was that a reference to the Special Force Deltas who, as sources tell us, operated out of a Denny Regrade motel and were the security eyes and ears for top federal officials? Such tidbits only hint at important missing WTO chapters.
What do we do now?
Something maddeningly simple: Routinely require official city approval of any sizable confab, including a full, honest, and public assessment of any security threat and signature of the requesting party on a legally binding contract of responsibility. Had that been done for WTO Seattle, it would have been called WTO Honolulu, which would have been fine by us.
More on WTO:
Report on the reports
The WTO is dead in the water, but don't count it out just yet.
The legacy of Seattle's WTO protest leaders.
