Two senators questioning detention without charges [Bush-hater, John McCain, at it again]

Miami Herald Online ^ | Wednesday, June 12, 2002 | BY JAMES KUHNHENN AND CASSIO FURTADO

[JohnHuang2]

WASHINGTON - Two top Republic senators are questioning why terrorist suspect Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen, is being detained outside the criminal justice system without charges.

''There is going to be a lot of public concern about how you treat a United States citizen,'' said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., a former prosecutor and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. ``I think that guy's got to be kept in detention, but I think the definition is a congressional matter.''

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., added that ``the attorney general has to come up with a rationale for why they're doing this. They've got to make their case.''

Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said during a visit to Qatar Tuesday that the administration is in no hurry to bring Padilla -- accused of helping to plan a ''dirty bomb'' attack in the United States -- to justice.

''Our interest, really, in this case, is not law enforcement. It is not punishment,'' Rumsfeld said. ``Because he was a terrorist, or working with terrorists, our interest at the moment is to try to find out everything he knows so hopefully we can stop other terrorist acts.''

Padilla, 31, is confined indefinitely in a military brig in Charleston, S.C., as a ''military combatant,'' which means he can be detained for an unspecified period without facing trial.

Padilla's attorney complained on Tuesday that detention is punitive by its nature and said the military was holding him unconstitutionally.

''My client is a citizen,'' Donna R. Newman said outside federal court in New York where she had filed a writ of habeas corpus, which would require Padilla to be brought to court.

''He still has constitutional rights -- the right to counsel, the right to be charged by a grand jury. They have not charged him,'' Newman said.

Sen. Specter called Tuesday for congressional hearings, arguing that the right to set up military tribunals rests with Congress.

Other lawmakers, including liberal Democrat Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, sided with the administration.

''If you aid and abet the enemy, whether you are a citizen or not, you're not entitled to the right of due process,'' Schumer said.

Padilla's military custody stands in sharp contrast to the manner in which the administration handled terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen, and John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban apprehended in Afghanistan.

Both now face criminal charges in federal court. Padilla, arrested in Chicago on May 8, was detained as a material witness for a grand jury investigation until he was handed over to the Pentagon.

''Lindh has been charged under criminal provisions,'' Specter said. ``So you really wonder what the differences are between Lindh and this guy.''

Senior government officials have said that Padilla discussed the bomb plot with al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan, among them Abu Zubaydah, the aide to Osama bin Laden who was captured in Pakistan in March, and who later told U.S. officials about the bomb plan. It is believed that Padilla met with Zubaydah as recently as March, just before Zubaydah was captured.

U.S. officials said another al Qaeda associate involved in the alleged plan is being held by Pakistani authorities.

They said the man, who has not been publicly identified but is from an Arab country in the Middle East, is being interrogated by U.S. authorities at an undisclosed location. There were conflicting reports as to whether Pakistan had handed the suspect over to U.S. authorities.

The second suspect traveled with Padilla to eastern Afghanistan last fall to meet Zubaydah and later accompanied Padilla to secret meetings with other senior al Qaeda leaders inside Pakistan to discuss the ''dirty bomb'' proposal as well as potential attacks against hotels, gas stations and other targets, the official said.

One of the most urgent aspects of the investigation is whether Padilla had other accomplices, particularly in the United States.

''He clearly had associates, and one of the things we want to ask him about is who those associates were and how we can track them down,'' Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said on CBS's Early Show.

One law-enforcement official Tuesday cautioned that no specific target city or mode of carrying out the bombing had been determined. The official said it was not clear whether al Qaeda's leaders had fully embraced Padilla or the plan, which he had proposed to them.

''There is no indication he had the means to do it or was given the authority to do it,'' the official said.

Neither a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office nor Newman would comment on the grand jury investigation of Padilla.

But officials said he had not offered any information of value.

''He was not forthcoming,'' one official said.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said in the Padilla case that authorities were acting under a 1942 Supreme Court precedent ``which establishes that the military may detain a United States citizen who has joined the enemy or has entered our country to carry out hostile acts.''

Drew Brown of The Herald's Washington Bureau contributed to this report, which was supplemented with information from Herald wire services.

[Dane]

Don't give a future Clinton administration the sound bite "Well GW did it" when they're whisking you off.

It amazes me how you self proclaimed uber patriots are cringing and sucking your thumbs in the corner worrying about a non-existant Hillary administartion while you go ape sh!t over Jose Jihad being held.

JMO, but it looks like you all have a case of manic paranoia mixed with a grandiose complex thinking that you all are the "know all and be alls" of the Constitution.

[callisto]

Legally they are following precedent. I'm not saying that this will not be overruled by the Courts...only that this opinion has been ruled in favor of a similar application in the past. I believe my feelings on this matter are based on my personal moral preferences...one does not commit acts of violence against their country or fellow citizens if they consider themselves as part of that nation. Legal and moral wrongs are two separate issues so you may be right with your statement that,"This is another cases where the legal/right thing to do may not be the best for the country yet we all need to demand our elected officials and government stick to the provisions of the constitution."

[Dane]

To me, it is not acceptable

To me coddling terrorists is not acceptable.

[Dane]

Look's to me like some of you who don't see this as an issue should invest some time in a high school civics course.

Maybe you should invest in looking at the real world where there are maniacs out there trying to kill millions of people and esoteric arguments aren't going to stop them.

[Catspaw]

As I understand this, Padilla was being held as a material witness and not talking until he was transferred to military custody and put in the brig in SC this weekend. The news reports have said that Padilla will be questioned--sans attorney--probably at Gitmo, then will be brought back to the US courts to be charged. My problem with this is anything they derive from questioning him in Gitmo would probably not be able to be used by the prosecution in any criminal case because he was not under Constitutional protections when he was questioned. I do believe the legal term is "fruits from a poisoned tree." They're going to have to be extremely careful if they get any info out of him--they probably will not be able to use it against him because his statements weren't voluntary--and I do believe his lawyer is going to put up one heck of a battle on this one.

[callisto]

No truer words have been said than "Freedom isn't free." If you'll see my post in #102 you'll see where I stated that I've determined my felings for this case must be derived from my moral feelings of love for one's country and fellow men. I've been wrestling with this issue because under the Clinton Administration the "translation" of "our living"(sic) document the Constitution was a major problem for me, and since 9/11 we've watched many of our freedoms become, not necessarily lost but given wider openings to their destruction. I feel we must do what we need to do to protect our citizens, but with an eye towards the possiblility that these changes may be misused in the future by some who are not so morally clear.

[Iwo Jima]

What about the rights of the people who died on 9/11? Who speaks for them and their rights?

What a meaningless and insulting irrelevancy! I am sick and tired of those who hide behind the tragic murder of those poor civilians on 9/11 as some kind of justification for destroying the Constitution and abandoning our freedoms to government.

Your shameless posturing as someone whose attack on our country, our freedoms, and our Contsitusion is justified or even required due to the sympathy which everyone feels for those poor murdered people is revolting.

If someone had called me at 8:00 a.m. on 9/11 and said "3000 innocent people are about to be brutally murdered unless you agree to abandon the Constitution and the liberty which it was intended to protect" and it truly was my decision to make, I would say what anyone who holds these things -- country, liberty, Constitution in high or even moderate regard -- "Nuts!"

WE WILL NOT TRADE OUR FREEDOMS WHICH THOUSANDS OR MAYBE MILLIONS HAVE FOUGHT AND DIED FOR to save or avenge the lives of 3000 or even 300,000,000. We will fight but we will never surrender!

And if they then said "Well, don't look now, Buddy, but you and your family are among those 3000," I would say "Nuts, and double Nuts!!!" I could not love my family half as much did I not love our country, our liberty, and our Consdtitution just a little bit more.

When you make such sickening statements, I hear you trash talking every man, including those in my family, and woman who ever laid down his life to save our country, liberty, and Constitution. By what right do you presume to denigrate the sacrifices of those noble men and women? Were their lives so meaningless that you should dismiss them so? Are the 3000 who died on 9/11 more worthy in your eyes?

[Dane]

To you defending the Constitution is an 'esoteric argument' . That explains a lot.

Yep it explains a lot that you would rather coddle the enemy than defeat them.

You and the ACLU have the same mindset.

[AzJP]

Dane is well known around here. I'll let you decide how to describe Dane. Dane is on many "not worth the effort for an intelligent conversation" lists. Easily slides into namecalling.

Welcome aboard.

[BikerNYC]

I feel we must do what we need to do to protect our citizens, but with an eye towards the possiblility that these changes may be misused in the future by some who are not so morally clear.

What do you mean? That you trust the powers-that-be to abuse their constitutional authority this time, but you worry about it on other occassions when you might disagree with the ends? Is this an ends justify the means test?

I don't trust any of them. No one should step beyond consitutitonal parameters. I don't know a single thing about whether or not what the government is telling us about this guy is true, and a jury has yet to pass on his guilt based upon evidence presented in court. Until that time, he has the right to be formally apprised of the charges against him in a timely manner as required by law. If the government cannot do that, the guy should be released.

It amazes me that so many people who distrust the government on so many issues are willing to simply accept whatever the government says when it comes to incarcerating its citizens before a jury (that is, the People) has determined guilt.

[hchutch]

The Constitution is not a suicide pact. What good does it do us if we're all dead?

[Iwo Jima]

The very reason that our wise Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution is because they knew that men are not angels and that we cannot rely on "electing good men to office" to defend our hard-won freedoms. They foresaw the very type of situation which we are currently experiencing in the war against terror.

This is not a hard concept. The Constitution does not allow the government to do what is currently doing. Abandoning the Constitution is not "progress," but just the opposite. It is a retreat to the bad old days when we had no Constitution and no freedom and were under the thumb of an all-powerful government.

[hchutch]

It's the old question: Do you take Hitler out after that Nuremburg rally? We got intelligence reporting that this guy was scouting out advanced reporting. We need to preserve the methods and sources of that intelligence, ESPECIALLY in time of war, which this is.

And you don't win wars by coddling the enemy. You win wars by taking them out of the picture, either via capture or by having them assume the ambient temperature atthe hands of our military forces. Any questions?

[AzJP]

Iwo, you're on a roll.

Here's one I've used: "I'm sorry, so sorry, about the deaths in WTC. But a helluva' lot more than three thousand gave their lives and worse to establish and defend the Constitution". "I'm not about to desecrate them because a bunch of big government pukes want to trash our hard-won freedoms".

Cheers!