America's New War? |
Following, are two articles. The first, is from the Washington Post. The second, is a commentary by the World Internet News Distributary Source, reacting to the article in the Post.
Silence of 4 Terror Probe Suspects Poses
Dilemma
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post
Sunday, October 21, 2001; Page A06
FBI and Justice Department investigators are increasingly frustrated by the silence of jailed suspected associates of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, and some are beginning to that say that traditional civil liberties may have to be cast aside if they are to extract information about the Sept. 11 attacks and terrorist plans.
More than 150 people rounded up by law enforcement officials in the aftermath of the attacks remain in custody, but attention has focused on four suspects held in New York who the FBI believes are withholding valuable information.
FBI agents have offered the suspects the prospect of lighter sentences, money, jobs, and a new identity and life in the United States for them and their family members, but they have not succeeded in getting information from them, according to law enforcement sources.
"We're into this thing for 35 days and nobody is talking," a senior FBI official said, adding that "frustration has begun to appear."
Said one experienced FBI agent involved in the investigation: "We are known for humanitarian treatment, so basically we are stuck. . . . Usually there is some incentive, some angle to play, what you can do for them. But it could get to that spot where we could go to pressure . . . where we won't have a choice, and we are probably getting there."
Among the alternative strategies under discussion are using drugs or pressure tactics, such as those employed occasionally by Israeli interrogators, to extract information. Another idea is extraditing the suspects to allied countries where security services sometimes employ threats to family members or resort to torture.
Under U.S. law, interrogators in criminal cases can lie to suspects, but information obtained by physical pressure, inhumane treatment or torture cannot be used in a trial. In addition, the government interrogators who used such tactics could be sued by the victim or charged with battery by the government.
The four key suspects, held in New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center, are Zacarias Moussaoui, a French Moroccan detained in August initially in Minnesota after he sought lessons on how to fly commercial jetliners but not how to take off or land them; Mohammed Jaweed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan, Indians traveling with false passports who were detained the day after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks with box cutters, hair dye and $5,000 in cash; and Nabil Almarabh, a former Boston cabdriver with alleged links to al Qaeda.
Questioning of "the two with the box cutters and others have left us wondering what's the next phase," the FBI official said.
One former senior FBI official with a background in counterterrorism said recently, "You can't torture, you can't give drugs now, and there is logic, reason and humanity to back that." But, he added, "you could reach a point where they allow us to apply drugs to a guy. . . . But I don't think this country would ever permit torture, or beatings."
He said there was a difference in employing a "truth serum," such as sodium pentothal, "to try to get critical information when facing disaster, and beating a guy till he is senseless."
"If there is another major attack on U.S. soil, the American public could let it happen," he said. "Drugs might taint a prosecution, but it might be worth it."
Even some people who are firm supporters of civil liberties understand the pressures that are developing.
David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who obtained the release of Middle Eastern clients after they had been detained for years based on secret information, said that in the current crisis, "the use of force to extract information could happen" in cases where investigators believe suspects have information on an upcoming attack.
"If there is a ticking bomb, it is not an easy issue, it's tough," he said.
Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel during the Clinton administration, wrote recently that the Supreme Court distinguished terrorism cases from cases where lesser threats are involved. He noted that five justices in a recent deportation case recognized that the "genuine danger" represented by terrorism requires "heightened deference to the judgments of the political branches with respect to matters of national security."
Former attorney general Richard L. Thornburgh said, "We put emphasis on due process and sometimes it strangles us."
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, he said, "legally admissible evidence in court may not be the be-all and end-all." The country may compare the current search for information to brutal tactics in wartime used to gather intelligence overseas and even by U.S. troops from prisoners during military actions.
Extradition of Moussaoui to France or Morocco is a possibility, one law enforcement official said. The French security services were quick to leak to journalists in Paris that they had warned the CIA and FBI in early September, before the attacks, that Moussaoui was associated with al Qaeda and had pilot training.
The leak has irritated U.S. investigators in part because "it was so limited," one FBI official said. "Maybe we should give him [Moussaoui] to them," he said, noting that French security has a reputation for rough interrogations.
The threat of extradition to a country with harsh practices does not always work.
In 1997, Hani Abdel Rahim al-Sayegh, a Saudi citizen arrested in Canada and transferred to the United States under the promise that he would tell about the bombing of the Khobar Towers military barracks in Saudi Arabia, refused to cooperate in the investigation when he got here.
The FBI threatened to have al-Sayegh sent back to Saudi Arabia, where he could have faced beheading, thinking it would get him to talk. "He called their bluff and went back, was not executed and is in jail," a government official said.
Robert M. Blitzer, former chief of the FBI counterterrorism section, said offers of reduced sentences worked to get testimony in the cases of Ahmed Ressam, caught bringing explosives into the country for millennium attacks that never took place, and Ali Mohammed, the former U.S. Army Green Beret who pleaded guilty in the 1998 embassy bombings and provided valuable information about al Qaeda.
The two former al Qaeda members who testified publicly in the 1998 bombing trials were resettled with their families in the United States under the witness protection program and given either money or loans to restart their lives.
Torture "goes against every grain in my body," Blitzer said. "Chances are you are going to get the wrong person and risk damage or killing them." In the end, he said, there has to be another way.
The Winds
October 22, 2001
While in exile in Switzerland shortly before the Russian Revolution, Lenin made the following statement: "There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen." The world certainly has witnessed decades of change since the attacks of September 11. A dam was breached on that fateful day, the pent-up forces of change unleashed like a tidal-wave. Each new day brings news of developments only imagined a few short weeks ago. Government "contingency plans," rumored and debated among patriots and libertarians for decades, have become reality. The unimaginable has become possible.
America, a place President Bush likes to call a "beacon of freedom to the world", may soon have a government that commits those human rights abuses it condemns in regimes abroad, according to the Washington Post. On Sunday the Post reported on the growing frustration within the F.B.I. regarding its lack of progress in the interrogation of suspects connected with the September 11 attacks. More than 150 of the approximately 800 people arrested in the secrecy enshrouded federal dragnet remain in custody, many of them detained on immigration violations or as "material witnesses". The Post reports that the F.B.I. is encountering a "wall of silence" in its interrogations of four key suspects. "We're into this thing for 35 days and nobody is talking. Frustration has begun to appear."[1]
Federal investigators are disappointed that the usual incentives dangled before suspects -- reduced sentencing, money, jobs, protection in the witness protection program -- have failed to induce suspects to divulge information. "We are known for humanitarian treatment, so basically we are stuck ... But it could get to that spot where we could go to pressure ... where we don't have a choice, and we are probably getting there," said an F.B.I. agent in an interview with the paper.
Some of the alternatives described in the Post article are the use of drugs such as sodium pentothal, also known as truth serum, and "pressure tactics" such as those employed by Israeli interrogators against suspected "terrorists." The Israeli tactics have been described in various publications as "moderate physical pressure" - a nondescript method that carries enough meaning to provoke an outcry in Europe. Recently Israel's ambassador to Denmark, a former head of the General Security Service, was faced with possible indictment for human rights violations in Denmark for advocating the "moderate pressure" torture method against Palestinian prisoners.
And if those tactics fail, there is the option of sending suspects to "allied" countries whose security services are more experienced in using torture to extract information from suspects -- even threatening the suspect's family members. French security services honed their brutal interrogation methods during the Algerian war of independence, and were mentioned in the Post article as a possible destination for U.S. suspects unwilling to talk.
"We put emphasis on due process and sometimes it strangles us," said former attorney general Richard L. Thornburgh.
But it is "due process" -- your right to remain silent, have competent legal representation, examine the evidence against you, be formally arraigned before a judge and not be subject to cruel and unusual punishment -- that comprises a significant portion of America's "greatness", even though these civil liberties have been infringed upon by the federal agencies in recent years.
The F.B.I. agent quoted in the Washington Post may have been instructed to "leak" the idea of torture to the press as a trial balloon to test public opinion. It certainly is an indicator of what lurks in the secret halls and policy chambers of the U.S. government. Human rights abuses that were once practiced by the U.S. covertly will apparently become enshrined in policy under the flag of "fighting terrorism."
The government claims that torture may be justified to extract information needed to prevent more terrorist attacks, and one official speculated that Americans will be willing to accept it. "If there is another major attack on U.S. soil, the American public could let it happen," a former F.B.I. official told the Post. It would seem most certain that the mindless, flag-waving multitudes, who have little or no idea what their flag represents, would eagerly support repressive measures against unpopular minority groups that they perceive to be contrary to their mob mentality.
Already we may see the grim purposes of the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995 being carried out. This draconian law, passed in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, gave expanded powers to the Attorney General to detain foreign nationals and deny them basic rights provided the accused under the U.S. Constitution. Many of the 800 or so people swept into the federal dragnet were detained on minor immigration technicalities that were used to exploit the expanded powers granted by this 1995 law. Others were held as "material witnesses" - a rarely used power of the grand jury that permits the authorities to hold someone indefinitely without granting bail and without charging them with a crime. The authorities don't even have to tell the person why they are in jail, or confirm or deny that they are even in custody.[2]
On September 29 the Sacramento Bee reported that the F.B.I. arrested two men in San Diego, California, and were unwilling to furnish their attorney with information as to the charges or their whereabouts. These men were held incommunicado for several days before being permitted to contact anyone, as were the majority of the rest that were "disappeared" into the federal detention system.
Some may argue that measures such as these are acceptable during a national emergency. After all, President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the civil war. The illusion is that this is "another patriotic war between good and evil -- like Word War II." It is not. It is a global purge of dissenting elements.
"This is uncharted territory," said Joseph diGenova, confirming that the U.S. has never been on this path before. He is the former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia who was quoted in a Saturday article printed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "This is the largest criminal investigation in history. It's wartime, so there may be some additional secrecy things that have come into play. ... It's a strange mixture of immigration law, criminal law, grand jury law and wartime national security powers of the president."[3]
It may be uncharted, but it is not unplanned. There is a Latin maxim -- Inter arma silent leges -- which means: "In time of war the laws are silent.. The "war on terrorism" was quickly declared after the tragedy of September 11, even though we still don't know who the enemy is except that there's this man in Afghanistan. A couple of days later Americans were told the war could take as much as ten years, and would be global in scope. Finally, last Sunday, the U.S. top military officer, General Richard Myers, told ABC This Week, "This is a global war on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Last Friday Vice President Dick Cheney said the war on terror "is different than the Gulf War was, in the sense that it may never end. At least, not in our lifetime."[4]
In other words, say good-bye to the rule of law for the rest of your life. We are in a "war" against an undefined enemy, our objectives are equally vague and evolving, and we will incarcerate, torture, or assassinate anyone we want according to our "strange mixture" of secret executive orders and national security directives. This is the way things are going to be forever. So get used to it.
This is why the aftermath of September 11 is a "war", which gives unlimited powers to the government, and not a criminal investigation in which the rights of the accused and the rule of law limit the power of the government to some degree. Welcome to what is known as the national security state.
September 11 marks a new day for the United States. Today it is a few hundred middle-eastern foreigners who find themselves detained incommunicado, "disappeared" from their friends and families by the decrees of secret courts and secret evidence. Tomorrow it will be others, and as the "war on terror" is expanded to include other "forms of terror", more will hear the midnight knock on their door. Soon the entire world will feel the crushing embrace of the false savior they have chosen in their quest for peace and security. But it will be too late.
Footnotes:
Silence of Four Terror Probe Suspects Poses Dilemma - Washington Post, 10-21 (The article at the top of this page.)
See footnote 2
Afghanistan 'Small Piece' of War, Top U.S. Brass Says - Reuters, 10-21