Items compiled from Tribune news services Published January 22, 2006
NEW YORK -- Entertainer Harry Belafonte, one of the Bush administration's harshest critics, compared the Homeland Security Department to the Nazi Gestapo on Saturday and attacked the president as a liar.
"We've come to this dark time in which the new Gestapo of Homeland Security lurks here, where citizens are having their rights suspended," Belafonte said in a speech to the annual meeting of the Arts Presenters Members Conference.
His remarks, part of a 45-minute speech on the role of the arts in a politically changing world, were greeted with a roaring standing ovation from an audience that included members of the arts community from several dozen countries.
Calls to Homeland Security and White House officials were not immediately returned.
Belafonte had called President Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world" during a trip to Venezuela two weeks ago.