Posted on 09/04/2002 12:22:02 PM PDT by dead
Jonathan Turley is a professor of constitutional and public-interest law at George Washington University Law School in D.C. He is also a defense attorney in national security cases and other matters, writes for a number of publications, and is often on television. He and I occasionally exchange leads on civil liberties stories, but I learn much more from him than he does from me.
For example, a Jonathan Turley column in the national edition of the August 14 Los Angeles Times ("Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision") begins:
"Attorney General John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be 'enemy combatants' has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace." Actually, ever since General Ashcroft pushed the U.S. Patriot Act through an overwhelmingly supine Congress soon after September 11, he has subverted more elements of the Bill of Rights than any attorney general in American history.
Under the Justice Department's new definition of "enemy combatant"—which won the enthusiastic approval of the president and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld—anyone defined as an "enemy combatant," very much including American citizens, can be held indefinitely by the government, without charges, a hearing, or a lawyer. In short, incommunicado.
Two American citizens—Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla—are currently locked up in military brigs as "enemy combatants." (Hamdi is in solitary in a windowless room.) As Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe said on ABC's Nightline (August 12):
"It bothers me that the executive branch is taking the amazing position that just on the president's say-so, any American citizen can be picked up, not just in Afghanistan, but at O'Hare Airport or on the streets of any city in this country, and locked up without access to a lawyer or court just because the government says he's connected somehow with the Taliban or Al Qaeda. That's not the American way. It's not the constitutional way. . . . And no court can even figure out whether we've got the wrong guy."
In Hamdi's case, the government claims it can hold him for interrogation in a floating navy brig off Norfolk, Virginia, as long as it needs to. When Federal District Judge Robert Doumar asked the man from the Justice Department how long Hamdi is going to be locked up without charges, the government lawyer said he couldn't answer that question. The Bush administration claims the judiciary has no right to even interfere.
Now more Americans are also going to be dispossessed of every fundamental legal right in our system of justice and put into camps. Jonathan Turley reports that Justice Department aides to General Ashcroft "have indicated that a 'high-level committee' will recommend which citizens are to be stripped of their constitutional rights and sent to Ashcroft's new camps."
It should be noted that Turley, who tries hard to respect due process, even in unpalatable situations, publicly defended Ashcroft during the latter's turbulent nomination battle, which is more than I did.
Again, in his Los Angeles Times column, Turley tries to be fair: "Of course Ashcroft is not considering camps on the order of the internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese American citizens in World War II. But he can be credited only with thinking smaller; we have learned from painful experience that unchecked authority, once tasted, easily becomes insatiable." (Emphasis added.)
Turley insists that "the proposed camp plan should trigger immediate Congressional hearings and reconsideration of Ashcroft's fitness for important office. Whereas Al Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our citizens, Ashcroft has become a clear and present threat to our liberties." (Emphasis added.)
On August 8, The Wall Street Journal, which much admires Ashcroft on its editorial pages, reported that "the Goose Creek, South Carolina, facility that houses [Jose] Padilla—mostly empty since it was designated in January to hold foreigners captured in the U.S. and facing military tribunals—now has a special wing that could be used to jail about 20 U.S. citizens if the government were to deem them enemy combatants, a senior administration official said." The Justice Department has told Turley that it has not denied this story. And space can be found in military installations for more "enemy combatants."
But once the camps are operating, can General Ashcroft be restrained from detaining—not in these special camps, but in regular lockups—any American investigated under suspicion of domestic terrorism under the new, elastic FBI guidelines for criminal investigations? From page three of these Ashcroft terrorism FBI guidelines:
"The nature of the conduct engaged in by a [terrorist] enterprise will justify an inference that the standard [for opening a criminal justice investigation] is satisfied, even if there are no known statements by participants that advocate or indicate planning for violence or other prohibited acts." (Emphasis added.) That conduct can be simply "intimidating" the government, according to the USA Patriot Act.
The new Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report, shows the government, some years hence, imprisoning "pre-criminals" before they engage in, or even think of, terrorism. That may not be just fiction, folks.
Returning to General Ashcroft's plans for American enemy combatants, an August 8 New York Times editorial—written before those plans were revealed—said: "The Bush administration seems to believe, on no good legal authority, that if it calls citizens combatants in the war on terrorism, it can imprison them indefinitely and deprive them of lawyers. This defiance of the courts repudiates two centuries of constitutional law and undermines the very freedoms that President Bush says he is defending in the struggle against terrorism."
Meanwhile, as the camps are being prepared, the braying Terry McAuliffe and the pack of Democratic presidential aspirants are campaigning on corporate crime, with no reference to the constitutional crimes being committed by Bush and Ashcroft. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis prophesied: "The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people." And an inert Democratic leadership. See you in a month, if I'm not an Ashcroft camper.
However much his Cuban father loves him, his son -- in mind and soul, if not body -- belongs, after all, to the Cuban state.
Katie Couric, NBC's prominent political scientist, speaks sardonically of those who do not want our illustrious attorney general to send Elian to a place without the right to dissent. They must, she said, "be talking about Miami.
Some of those people in Miami who appall Couric with their zeal have experienced -- as she has not -- what Pascal Fontaine describes in the section on Cuba in "The Black Book of Communism" (Harvard University Press):
"To control the population, the Direccion Special del Ministerio del Interior (DSMI) recruits chivatos (informers) by the thousand. The DSMI works in three different fields: One section keeps a file on every Cuban citizen; another keeps track of public opinion; the third, in charge of the `ideological line,' keeps an eye on the church and its various congregations through infiltration."
The U.S. clergy who have so ardently supported the blood rights of Elian's father have not mentioned a report in the April 10 issue of Editor & Publisher about the press freedoms that readers and writers enjoy in Cuba:
"A favorite tactic is placing reporters under house arrest to prevent them from covering events that could prove embarrassing to the government. Upwards of two dozen journalist were subjected to that treatment in the past six months."
Che Guevara's laughter reverberates as I listen to the passionate indictments of those of us who are so cruel as to not understand the heartfelt wisdom of Janet Reno: "The law is very clear. A child who's lost his mother belongs with the sole surviving parent."
Even when the ultimate parent is Big Brother? On April 18, the United Nations Human Rights Commission condemned Cuba for its "continued violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms."
But now the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that, despite Clinton and Reno, Elian will finally have his due-process day in court, and may yet live in freedom.
- Nat Hentoff "Elian's Human Rights" 4/24/00
He is a whiny liberal blowhard who pretends to be a historian.
Maybe free men wouldn't have lost if enslaved men were free as well. So I'm sure you'll understand that I'm less than sympathetic. Besides, Lincoln didn't really free anyone for what it's worth and the fight wasn't over slavery.
At any rate, it's 2002. That's Two Thousand and Two. The 21st Century. I like it here. I don't want to go back to the 19th Century.
So, can we stay here in the present, please?
Will you stand by your essay if the government, at the time you are accused, is led by President Hillary Clinton and her Attorney General Andrew Cuomo?
As it should be. I wouldn't trust the lot of them (politicians and government) as far as I could throw them.
Carolyn
One of our founding children had a few comments about that trade off.
This is a new situation, we should make reasonable new rules to deal with it.
Putting all the power to determine who is and who is not an EC in the hands o fone branch of government is not reasonable, IMHO, no matter whose administration it is.
Shalom.
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