Posted on 12/06/2001 12:05:48 PM PST by Jean S
Many people are concerned about protecting the possible erosion of our civil liberties during the war against terrorism.
But Chief Justice Margaret Marshall’s husband, Anthony Lewis of the NY Times, is anxious only to use this concern for political purposes.
Consider the following summary of the facts.
* * * * * *
A Palestinian man was arrested in June 1997 and held for 3 1/2 years on secret evidence before being released by a judge in December last year. He was re-arrested last month for violating his visa and will be deported as a threat to national security. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta has upheld the deportation order.
* * * * * *
Now consider that Marshall’s husband wrote a scorching beginning paragraph in his article and then this.
“Could that happen in America? In John Ashcroft's America, it has happened.”
Does Lewis really think we’re that stupid? This Palestinian was arrested and held for most of that time by Janet Reno and the Clinton administration.
But that fact doesn’t bother the New York Times and Anthony Lewis.
“Why is Attorney General Ashcroft using his office to punish this man so severely?” asks Lewis.
“At a time of national anxiety about Arabs and Muslims, Mr. Al-Najjar is a useful target: a Palestinian Muslim. More broadly, Mr. Ashcroft has claimed power to detain non-citizens even when immigration judges order them released.
“It could be, too, that Mr. Ashcroft wants to use this case to establish the right to use secret evidence against aliens. The practice had been all but abandoned by the Justice Department after several judges frowned on it and more than 100 members of the House co-sponsored legislation to prohibit it.
“With all the extreme measures taken by the administration in recent days -- detaining hundreds of people, ordering thousands questioned, establishing military tribunals -- Mr. Ashcroft and President Bush have assured the country that they will enforce the measures with care, and with concern for civil liberties. Their motto is, ‘Trust us.’
“The Al-Najjar case shows that there is no basis for trust.”
We have reported before the obvious fact that the NYTimes/BostonGlobe conglomerate is not going to support our troops when the going gets tough. This article by Lewis shows they are not supporting it even now.
These are very serious questions that should be raised about our civil liberties. But Mr. Lewis is not asking those serious questions. He is being a demagogue and saying and doing anything to destroy John Ashcroft and President Bush -- merely to gain political power.
How can the NYTimes/BostonGlobe lecture us about “trust” when it lobbied heavily for the appointment and confirmation of Margaret Marshall to be Chief Justice of our Supreme Judicial Court? It never revealed during that time the enormous conflict of interest it had in that her husband was in their employ.
Although the facts are not crystal clear, the NYTimes article in its news pages on Nov. 27 said, “In May 2000, a federal judge in Miami ruled that Mr. Najjar's detention violated due process and ordered a hearing in which he would be able to confront the evidence against him. Last December, an immigration judge ruled that a summary of the secret evidence provided by the Immigration and Naturalization Service was not detailed enough to allow Mr. Najjar to defend himself. The Board of Immigration Appeals decided to release Mr. Najjar, and he left jail on Dec. 15.”
If the news story from the NYTimes is accurate, how can Lewis write, “And Attorney General Janet Reno, who had the right to step in, refused to do so. A year ago Mr. Al-Najjar rejoined his wife and three daughters.”
Wasn’t Bill Clinton the President from 1997 to 2000? Couldn’t his people have “stepped in” at any time during this process? Wasn’t it his people who put this man through three years in jail before a judge finally ordered them to let him out?
Lewis also doesn’t reveal that Al-Najjar was re-arrested last month only because the U.S. Court of Appeals held earlier in the week that he could be deported.
Lewis also doesn’t tell us that his own newspaper reported that the judge who released Najjar merely held that the “summary” of the “secret” evidence that the government revealed wasn’t enough. He didn’t hold that Najjar wasn’t a spy, only that the government didn’t want to reveal the secret information in order to prove it.
Lewis began his article this way.
“On the basis of secret evidence, the government accuses a non-citizen of connections to terrorism, and holds him in prison for three years. Then a judge conducts a full trial and rejects the terrorism charges. He releases the prisoner. A year later government agents rearrest the man, hold him in solitary confinement and state as facts the terrorism charges that the judge found untrue.”
From everything we can read, the judge didn’t “reject” the terrorism charges. Lewis’ own newspaper reports that the “summary of the secret evidence provided by the Immigration and Naturalization Service was not detailed enough.” An Associated Press story says that, “Al-Najjar has never seen the secret evidence against him.”
There is nothing anywhere that says the judge “rejected” the charges, only that the government didn’t want to release its secret information. It was not in “direct contradiction to the findings made by Judge McHugh after a full trial,” as Lewis wrote.
We all saw the disgraceful treatment of John Ashcroft when he was appointed as Attorney General but this type of sewer politics by Chief Justice Marshall’s husband is beyond the pale.
Lewis peppered his article with this type of language, “The whole press release [from the Justice Department] had the ring not of law but of political propaganda. That is not the department of respected lawyers that I have known over many years.”
Lewis’ article had a headline, “It Can Happen Here.”
The most insulting part is that the article was datelined, “Boston.”
Mrs. Anthony Lewis' bio is here. I stopped reading Lewis more than 10 years ago, but I've kept an ear open for chatter about him. This is the first I heard his bloody wife is a judge. What a pious hypocrite, writing about other folks' hidden agendas and conflicts-of-interest.
Not just a judge, she's Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court.
It's an exercise in hyperbole, perhaps.
But when the critics resort to lying, as Anthony Lewis did, it ceases to be honest criticism. In which case, the critic's motivations are subject to legitimate question.
Truth be told, the NY Times probably isn't trying to undermine the war effort. Instead, they're only attempting to undermine President Bush...
That's their motive/intended target.
As far as they're concerned, an undermined war effort, with potentially more thousands of dead New Yorkers, would be acceptable collateral damage to be incurred.
He was ordered deported in 1997 for overstaying a student visa, then denied bail while he appealed after secret evidence accused him of ties to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.Probably need to deport some judges -- if anyone would take them.http://www.sptimes.com/News/121900/State/Al_Najjar_s_backers_d.shtml
America's Fifth Column ... watch PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
Download 8 Mb zip file here (50 minute video)
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