Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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The First 100 Days: Dismantling the Police State in a New Presidency – Part 2
This is the second of a three part special. Law and Disorder hosts bring a series of interviews with key attorneys, authors and activists from the front lines such as the Center For Constitutional Rights, Universities of Law and the National Lawyers Guild. Some of the police state policies are beginning to be reversed such as closing down secret CIA sites, a timeline to shut down Guantanamo, and mandating everyone CIA included follow US Army Field Manual Interrogation tactics.
Recently the Obama Administration defended the telecom wiretapping legislation. Attorney General Eric Holder told Senator Orin Hatch – “The duty of the Justice Department is to defend statutes that have been passed by Congress.”
CCR staff attorney Shane Kadidal explains in detail the 3 main groups of Guantanamo detainees, the laws that allow for secret sites, FISA wiretapping, National Security letters, data mining and the Patriot Act.
Shane Kadidal:
- The Three Groups in Guantanamo: First Group – Two dozen genuinely involved with “Al Qaeda” – planning terrorist activities – the people who would be tried in federal courts if GTMO never existed.
- Second Group – Shouldn’t have been there in the first place. The US says they may charge as many as 80 people, there are 255 people left, that means there are close to 200 people that the US gov’t will send home. Like the 500 people who have already been sent home from GTMO.
- Subgroups – there are about 110 Yemenis waiting to return back to Yemen
- Third group: Guantanamos refugees who come to GTMO from places with horrible human rights records, Syria, Uzbekistan, Tunisia, about 13 countries where we ordinarily give them asylum. We can’t return them in good faith back to the countries they are citizens of. Find traditional asylum accepting countries to send them to largely in Europe.
- Secret Sites: The next president could decide to end the secret sites – Who is accountable for sending people to black sites to be tortured? – Military Commissions Act gives those involved immunity from actions that would have been violations of the War Crimes Act or Anti Torture Act
- Repeal MCA – Once you do that, then any officials participating in the black sites have to worry the rest of their lives of being criminally prosecuted for what they did.
- Repealing the MCA would restore Habeas Corpus to full flower that Supreme Court did in the case of Razul and proper judicial oversight regarding detentions.
- Repudiate the whole practice of using black sites and rendition
- Torture: There is one measure out there to propose that the military revert to the model of the Army Field Manual, that actually has acceptable interrogation tactics. – Done
- The Army Field Manual was designed by Interrogation experts with long history of experience and know from practical experience that torture doesn’t work in producing reliable information.
- All of this can be done by executive order, a stroke of the pen as Clinton used to say.
- FISA – wiretapping – the secret court that approves wiretaps – The historic model was that law enforcement would have to present a little bit of evidence of suspicion and that the court would authorize the person to be wiretapped. You go to the judge you get the order directed to one person.
- Right now, it’s broader, instead of going to a judge with specific evidence and getting specific authority for a very limited wiretap. Now based on the FISA Amendments Act passed this summer of June 2008, – they seem to want to get authority to do a wholesale authority on wiretapping and they’ll give the judge criteria in very rough terms. The discretion of law enforcement no longer limited.
- The colonists wrote the fourth amendment with the warrant requirement in it because they were concerned the king had issued these general warrants to allow his agents to run around where there might be violations of the stamp tax act.
- The Supreme Court may argue that the fourth amendment is outdated and allow the broader wiretap powers.
- Also, a new president coming in may decide not to use this power, but there is going to be a great deal of inertia from the intelligence agencies who had five or six years of this power under the NSA
- Its hard to get rid of this entrenched thing, they’ll come to the president with all sorts of arguments.
- This is an area where Congress would have to step in to restore post Watergate era restrictions that were put in place in the FISA act in 1978
- Patriot Act – A lot of it hasn’t been used as predicted.
- Preventive detention – they can hold citizens for 7 days without charge/ but the president asserted executive power to hold citizens and non-citizens without charges for years.
- Now the Patriot Act looks like a model of checks and balances.
- National Security letters and Data Mining – The government pulls in huge amounts of data both from private sources and things that can accumulate. We know that they were seeking calling records, the story broke in the middle of 2006 from nearly all the phone companies and they complied.
- We know they’ve been seeking search terms in various contexts from internet providers, we know they have worked with Swift which processes interbank tranactions to get huge amount of financial transfer data, financial transactions that happen anywhere in the world.
- They’re putting this into a database to see if they can catch terrorists by applying pattern analysis. The first problem with that is that we don’t know if it works, its likely to have a very false positive rate.
- Very close to profiling and pull in people who should not be made the targets of suspicion.
- There is so little human intelligence on the ground, and its tempting for intelligence agencies to look to for technological panacea.
Guest – Shayana Kadidal has been at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) since 2001. Shane is senior managing attorney of the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative at CCR. In addition to supervising the Guantánamo litigation, he also works on the Center’s case against the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program, CCR v. Bush, and its challenge to the “material support” statute, HLP v. Gonzales. Shane has testified before Congress on the material witness statute and is a contributor to the Center’s book Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush, 2006. He graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
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Mara Verheyden-Hilliard: Criminalizing Dissent
Criminalizing Dissent has chilled most free speech movement in the United States, especially when demonstrators take to the streets. We talk with attorney Mara Verheyden Hilliard co_founder of The Partnership for Civil Justice Legal Defense & Education Fund about criminalizing dissent, surveillance, data mining, fusion centers and the ability to exercise first amendment rights. A recent example were the violations of free speech during the mass arrests of protesters at the 2008 Republican National Convention. The demonizing of protesters and their message in the media will usually allow for the use of military force by police. That combined with intelligence gathering and targeting of lead organizers squelched the voice of dissent in all age groups.
Mara Verheyden Hilliard:
- A lot of our work is at the intersection of first and fourth amendment rights.
- PCJ has a class action suit pending from the world bank IMF protest – 8 year drag out tactic.
- “What they want to do is stage-manage democracy.”
- Victory: After years of litigation the government has to lift regulations on number of people at the Great Lawn
- Is it important to say that we don’t want to go back to Jan 19, 2001 just the day before Bush took office- or is there more that we have to do?
- We think there has to be an audit of every agency’s databases to determine exactly what the databases are.
- Identify what has been collected, where it has been put, who has access to that information,
- Then to tell people in the United States individually, what has been collected on them and then to expunge it.
- For people in their United States, their government collecting information, maintaining information, in these massive database files, that can be used by law enforcement, pulled up in a moment’s notice is really a very dangerous practice.
- What they’ve done is misuse existing databases and data tools.
Guest – Attorney Mara Verheyden Hilliard co-founder of The Partnership for Civil Justice Legal Defense & Education Fund.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq Veterans, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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The First 100 Days: Dismantling the Police State in a New Presidency – Part 1
This is the first of a three part special. Law and Disorder hosts bring a series of interviews with key attorneys, authors and activists from the front lines such as the Center For Constitutional Rights, Universities of Law and the National Lawyers Guild. Some of the police state policies are beginning to be reversed such as closing down secret CIA sites, a timeline to shut down Guantanamo, and mandating everyone CIA included follow US Army Field Manual Interrogation tactics.
We define the current laws in place that now constitute a police state. Then we look at the steps the Obama Administration must take to turn back the major breaches in civil liberties such as the Patriot Act One and Two, the Military Commissions Act, FBI Guidelines and legal provisions that allow for torture. As you’ll hear, some attorneys believe much of the dismantling can be done by executive order.
We begin with a description of what we have seen since September 11, 2001 and precursors such as the Effective Death Penalty Act, the earlier renditions under Clinton’s administration. Then, right after 9/11 came the overreaching of executive power in the form of signing statements that misuse the war powers resolution to detain, torture and try so_called enemy combatants. This includes racial profiling against Muslims here and abroad, massive surveillance capacities and warrant_less wiretapping.
The dismantling of police state blocks in the new presidency will take attention to detail to ensure a full restoration of democracy that will ultimately allow for social progress. In the next hour we look at some remedies and solutions to reverse laws that have created domestic enemy combatants, Guantanamo Bay prison, Renditions, Secret CIA sites, Torture, Kangaroo Courts: Special Trials, FISA, domestic surveillance, private military contractors.
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Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Vince Warren discusses the abuse of preventive detention, torture, rendition and states secrets. Hosts cite recent examples of deep surveillance on peaceful protesters and the unprecedented collusion between federal, state and local law enforcement. Warren points out the importance of rolling back the police state measures put in place by the Bush administration, in that No president has ever given back the power a previous president has given him.
Vincent Warren:
- Torture/rendition/states secrets / right to dissent / the abuse of preventive detention.
- Torture top of list, the export of torture and CIA black sites.
- torture crimes at this time are unprosecutable adn its up to the president to
- Close Guantanamo prison – send prisoners back to countries they came from, repatriate.
- CCR and civil proceedings – hold accountable, the Bush administration to declare what they’ve done unconstitutional, damages to clients CCR represents and injunctive relief, future deterrents
- Universal jurisdiction stems from the Nuremberg principles that say a crime that is committed against a person anywhere is prosecutable anywhere.
- Countries such as Germany Spain and France have statutes for human rights abuse survivors to bring cases for prosecution.
- States secrets privilege, the privilige that the government has routinely invoked in a range of CCR cases, whenever the government says states secrets, the courts, including the supreme courts usually kick the case. The remedy?
- Congress can create a statute that limits the use of a states secrets power in order to make it consistent for truth telling and accountability.
- No president has ever given back the power a previous president has given him.
- The abuse of preventive detention, fusion centers – intelligence gathering and data mining – the concern is that no one can monitor and again its done in secrecy. no oversight, more preemptive law enforcement
- The irony here is that government usually acts as if one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing, unless they’re coming down on our constitutional rights, then they’re all on the same page.
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Naomi Wolf : 10 Steps
We’re joined by author and activist Naomi Wolf. She is the author of seven books, and the groundbreaking book The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot. In the book, Naomi addresses ten steps that societies, dictators, and sometimes democracies use to close an open society to move it toward facsism. We want to re-visit those ten steps.
Naomi Wolf:
- A small group of people used the law to subvert the law. Reichstag Fire, then disembowel their own Constitution.
- Initial thinking inspired from my friend who is the daughter of holocaust survivors, she said the Bush strategies echo early 1930s Germany.
- Enabling Acts in Germany gave the power to the state to read a person’s mail, listen to their phone calls and read their telegrams. This, in the alleged interest of national security and the fight against terrorism.
- Nazis used to unload the coffins of the war dead at night.
- A would-be dictator sought to close an open society or crush a democracy movement. Mussolini in 1920, the great evil pioneer. Hitler studied Mussolini, Stalin studied Hitler.
- I looked at Russia, studied Czechoslovakia in the 60’s, Pinochet’s coup in 1973, the Chinese crackdown on democracy in the 80s.
- What I saw was there was a blueprint. The blueprint has 10 steps. The 10 steps have been codified, they teach them at the School of the Americas.
- To help would be Latin-American dictators to overthrow their own governments. What terrified me is that those ten steps are being put in place by the Bush Administration.
- Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
- Create a gulag
- Develop a thug caste
- Set up an internal surveillance system
- Harass citizens’ groups
- Engage in arbitrary detention and release
- Target key individuals
- Control the press
- Dissent equals treason
- Suspend the rule of law
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Censorship, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Impeachment, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Saul Landau – Cuba 50th Anniversary
Then and now, Venezuela and Cuba, 1960_2008
Hosts talk with author and internationally known scholar Saul Landau about his recent article titled Then and Now, Venezuela and Cuba, 1960-2008 and the Cuban 50th Anniversary.
Saul Landau:
- It’s almost a miracle the revolution in Cuba survived 50 years, considering the United States was determined to destroy it.
- In light of all that the Cuban revolution emerges as something miraculous.
- One looks at Cuba today, one finds lots of despair, especially after 3 brutal hurricanes.
- You see Cubans hanging out in the street in the middle of the work day, drinking beer, not exactly a sign of high spirited socialist morality.
- Some are plotting to go to Florida, where they still think there’s some paradise waiting for them. Some do succeed, cleaning the toilets at the Miami airport.
- I kept saying to myself, if someone came over from Europe to the United States in 1862, they would say “Oh, this place had so much promise.”
- I see the Cuban Revolution as a total success, in the sense it achieved all of its goals and then some.
- When I first went to Cuba, I was 24 at the time, the kids were running ministries and it was creative anarchy.
- Pre – Bay of Pigs: Cuba survived so many US based sabotages, terrorist attacks were launched from the United States.
- Some were assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, some were attempts to burn down Cuban installations.
- Fidel set out the goals of the Cuban Revolution that were established in the 1860s with the first war of Cuban Independence against Spain.
- Which meant not taking crap from the United States. However, anyone who defied the United States was removed from office by the Marines, or overthrown by a coup backed by the US.
- Removed from office in Domican Republican in 1965, Removed from office in Brasil in 1964, Ghiannah, the coup in Chile.
- Here Fidel stands for Cuban sovereignty which means disobedience.
- Today Cuba has 70 thousand doctors. 20 thousand in Venezuela, plus Cubans were actors on the world stage.
- Cuban soldiers helping stop apartheid in Southern Angola in 1986-87, and paved the way for independence in Angola and the release of Nelson Mandela.
- The Cuban Revolution WAS successful. Now, there are many professionals, such as engineers and doctors working as cab drivers or making pizza. The salary and wage structure are not just.
- When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Cuban economy tanked and Cubans were on their own. They’ve buying and selling illegally, which in the last 18 years, has had a corrosive effect. Each Cuban has had to have some sort of hustle in order to get along. Cuba must begin to make reforms now.
- Upsides: They can’t get evicted or homes foreclosed on them/ Access to the best medical care.
- A gerontocracy has been running Cuba for security reasons and they have to hand the car keys over to their middle aged kids.
- You have no right to practice opposition politics. Which is a minus. When you have highly educated people without access to the internet, creativity and productivity suffers.
- Ironically, the US and Cuba military have had good relations.
- Once the travel ban and embargo is dropped, and a million Americans come pouring in with fat wallets, the state has basically lost control of the economy.
- If they can’t trust the citizens to back up the system that has given them these rights, the right to housing, jobs, education, medical care etc.
- The counter-revolution was exported to Florida, (Republican Cubans – Miami) that’s where they are.
- Obama Administration – look for travel ban lifted for Cuban Americans. For the first time the President of the United States will owe nothing to the Cubans in Miami.
- Raul Castro has offered a swap of prisoners with new president
- Monroe Doctrine Funeral : Established 1823, written by John Quincy Adams, essentially saying that European colonial powers should stay out of Latin America
Guest – Saul Landau, an internationally known scholar, author, commentator, and filmmaker on foreign and domestic policy issues. Landau’s most widely praised achievements are the over forty films he has produced on social, political and historical issues, and worldwide human rights. Landau has written over ten books, short stories and poems. His films include: Fidel, 1968 /Cuba and Fidel 1974, / The Uncompromising Revolution, 1990. To order films send email to RoundWorldProductions at gmail.com
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RNC 8: Terrorism Charges Filed, Free Speech Chilled
Eight alleged leaders of the Republican National Convention protest organization called the RNC Welcoming Committee have been charged under the 2002 Minnesota Patriot Act with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism. The RNC 8, may each face up to 7 and a half years in prison for their alleged roles in the RNC protest activities. The charges against the RNC 8 follow a year’s worth of investigation by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department with coordination of state and federal agencies that had infiltrated and collected information on the group.
The RNC 8 are Monica Bicking, Eryn Trimmer, Luce Guillen Givins, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald, and Max Spector
According to Bruce Nestor, Minnesota Chapter president of the National Lawyers Guild, police did not find evidence of bomb making materials during the raids only common household items such as paint and computers. The National Lawyers Guild also mentions that police used paid informants that alleged the protesters intended to sabotage airports.
- RNC Welcoming Committee: anti-authoritarian anarchist group. It is an open, public organization with a website and press releases.
- Originally charged with conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism.
- Now, the Ramsey County attorney Susan Gertner in St. Paul Minnesota has added 3 more charges.
- Conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism, second degree.
- Conspiracy to damage property in furtherance of terrorism.
- Conspiracy to damage property criminal charge.
- With these charges the RNC 8 could get 20 years each under Minnesota patriot act style statute.
- Includes property damage as an act of terrorism /some plate glass windows broken, some police cars damaged.
- No property damaged occurred before the RNC 8 were arrested. Evidence Project – National Lawyers Guild
Guest – Gena Berglund with the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
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Harpers Magazine Panel: Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration
We hear from Elizabeth Holtzman, Author of The Impeachment of George W. Bush. The panelists at the event discussed methods available to a democracy to prosecute high officials in the Bush Administration and responded to Scott Horton’s Harper’s Magazine cover story called “Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration.”
Elizabeth Holtzman:
- When the president takes the oath of office, treaties are the law of the land.
- The president is responsible for carrying out the Geneva conventions.
- The idea to torture in order to get information is not accurate. As a prosecutor, we handle murders, rapes, robberies, everyday in New York City and around this country.
- We don’t get the information to solve these crimes by beating it out of people, we do it through smart detective work and we do it through careful investigation.
- The idea that we can handle local crimes without torture or crimes of war is nonsensical .
- It’s important for us not to get into this trap of the ticking clock. When you’re dealing with a serial rapists or murderer you got a ticking clock too.
- We manage to deal with that everyday without torturing people in this country.
- Impeachment: A person can be impeached after he or she has left office.
- Statute: The Anti-Torture Act, it is a convention against torture making it a US crime. Which makes torture a felony prosecutable in the USA.
- If death results from torture, there’s a death penalty, which means there is not statute of limitations.
- Which means that somewhere down the line as long as these people are alive, they can be prosecuted and brought to justice.
- The War Crimes Act of 1996, which makes it a federal crime to deal in a cruel and inhuman way with detainees. This can be prosecuted in federal courts.
- So, whether “water boarding” is torture or not, is irrelevant under the War Crimes Act.
- That’s why Alberto Gonzales, wanted to opt out of the Geneva Conventions with respect to the members of Al-Quaeda.
- A little problem: The Supreme Court in the summer of 2006 ruled: the Geneva Convention applies to all US detainees. War Crimes Act liability.
- While passing the Military Commissions Act, they also slipped in that the War Crimes Act would be in effect retroactively.
- We need to restore the War Crimes Act because it has no statute of limitations. Restore as it was before October 2006, That will allow us no matter what to bring the prosecutions that need to be brought.
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Civil Liberties, Death Penalty, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Impeachment, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Sit In Victory at Chicago’s Republic Windows and Doors Plant
Last wee, angry laid off workers from Republic Windows and Doors agreed to leave the closed Illinois plant they’ve occupied in protest for six days. The workers accepted a deal that will give each of them about 6 thousand dollars, accrued vacation time and two months of helathcare coverage. About 1.75 million will be put into an escrow account to be supervised by the worker’s union.
Paul Buhle:
- Why stand outside where you slug it out with cops and scabs while you can be inside defending your job.
- The sit down strike goes all the way back to the Wobblies in 1907
- We have entered a new era, the nation has acquired more political oxygen than it has in a long time.
- There’s a spirit of empowerment that people feel they have to change the situation immediately around them.
- In the way of occupying universities, we can move things much better than those in charge with their foot upon us.
- Now is the time to develop those abandoned factories into living spaces, so they don’t become targets of firebugs.
Guest- Paul Buhle, senior lecturer at Brown University, a historian of American radicalims., a former member of Students for a Democratic Society and author of many books including images of American Radicalism. Also, Che, A Graphic Biography, and Isordore Duncan, a graphic biography by Sabrina Jones.
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Verdict Against Holy Land Charity Could Have a Chilling Effect on the Muslim Community
Last month, a jury in Dallas, Texas found five Palestinian men guilty of more than 100 charges in the nation’s largest terrorism financing trial since 9/11. We talk with Laila Al-Arian, a Washington based journalist, who recently wrote a powerful Alternet article about this case and its impact on Muslim charities.
As many listeners may know, Holy Land was the largest Muslim charity in the United States, the the Bush administration shut it down after the September 11th attacks, and arrested five officials from the charity. In her article Al-Arian describes how the prosecution use unrelated video of suicide bombers to emotionally sway the jury. We’re later joined by Linda Moreno, a defense attorney in the case.
Laila Al-Arian:
- One of the witnesses (in this recent case) was an expert witness, he was a Shin Bet agent.
- The way the US government is trying to prove that these Zakaat Committees are funding Hamas is through the testimony of this Israeli witness. The testimony can’t be authenticated.
- The first time in a US court room that an expert witness, not a fact witness, testified under a pseudonym.
- How do you detect perjury, or how does the defense cross-examine without background.
- Expert witness lied to the jury about the Zakat committees being tied to Hamas
- What you’re really doing is prosecuting an Israeli Palestinian conflict in an American courtroom.
- For Muslims giving charity is a religious obligation.
- There will be an appeal on the grounds of the expert witness Shin Bet agent.
- Joe Lieberman and George Bush commented on the verdict of this case.
- All this does is punish people who are suffering, and punishing those who want to help them.
Linda Moreno:
- The government began its exhibit with a photograph of a bombed out bus, which had nothing to do with the accused in the Holy Land case.
- They also showed video of children doing skits, an art form that is a result of culture under occupation.
- Children in the US get to play violent video games, but they get to turn that off and go back to the safety of their home, go into your bedroom and shut the door. When you’re a Palestinian child, you don’t have that luxury.
- We know because we proved in both trials, that the US Government through USAID and other organizations was giving to the exact same Zakat Committees that were at issue in the indictment of this case.
- And the notion that you have to vet the recipient of charitiable donations, I believe is un-American.
- There’s just something wrong about criminalizing humanitarian aid. Charities under fire.
Guests – Laila Al-Arian, a Washington DC based journalist. Linda Moreno, high profile defense attorney.
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Harpers Magazine Panel: Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration
We hear from our own Michael Ratner President, Center for Constitutional Rights. The event discussed methods available to a democracy to prosecute high officials in the Bush Administration and responded to Scott Horton’s Harper’s Magazine cover story called “Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration.” We will hear more from the other speakers in the coming weeks.
- Elizabeth Holtzman, Author, The Impeachment of George W. Bush
- Scott Horton, Contributing Editor, Harper’s Magazine
- Jerrold Nadler, Chairman, House Subcommittee on the Constitution
- Antonio Taguba, Major General (U.S. Army Ret.)
Civil Liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Debrief: Vermont Attorney General Candidate Charlotte Dennett
Attorney Charlotte Dennett of Vermont ran for the state attorney general on the platform that if elected she would immediately undertake the prosecution of George W. Bush for the unnecessary deaths of Vermont soldiers in Iraq. Vermont has paid the highest price in deaths per capita in the nation. This strategy is based and outlined in the book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, written by Vincent Bugliosi, former prosecutor and bestselling author. The strategy is to establish jurisdiction in the cases for Attorneys General in each state and also the approximately 900 district attorneys in the counties of those states.
Charlotte Dennett:
- We weren’t trying Bush on war crimes. What we were proposing was to prosecute Bush under state murder statutes, criminal statutes.
- William Sorrell, current Vermont Attorney General, in his campaign, claimed that it (prosecution) couldn’t happen in Vermont, if you want to prosecute war crimes you have to do it in the Hague.
- Sorrell repeated this message constantly, making it (prosecution) seem impossible to do in Vermont.
- Sorrell would not acknowledge that, if he did acknowledge then we could establish jurisdiction and moved forward.
- Because he refused to acknowledge it made it look hopeless and ridiculous. I’m afraid a lot of Vermonters got that message.
- A friend of mine told me that when asked if the Obama administration will prosecute Bush, our own senator Patrick Leahy, head of the senate judiciary committee said No it can’t be done. Dont’ roll over on thisIf we keep letting this happen then what kind of society are we going to encourage.
Guest – Charlotte Dennett, attorney, and former investigative reporter for 30 years and has been practicing law in Vermont for 11 years. She helped sue one of the worst polluters of the country, including Du Pont.
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On War Crimes and Torture: Should High Government Officials Be Investigated and Prosecuted?
We hear an excerpt from a debate between our own Michael Ratner and Stuart Taylor at Georgetown University, moderated by David Vladeck, Professor, Georgetown University Law Center. Stuart Taylor is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institute, he’s a columnist for the National Jornal and contributing editor for Newsweek magazine. The event was titled On War Crimes and Torture: Should High Government Officials Be Investigated and Prosecuted? These issues are moving to the forefront in some media as the Bush Administration comes to a close.
Internet Message Forum On The Debate
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Research Professor of Law, Michael Tigar
Michael Tigar is an expert in Constitutional Law and the Supreme Court. He has represented Terry Nichols of the Oklahoma City Bombing, Angela Davis, and Lynne Stewart. Tigar outlines several steps the Obama Administration must do to turn back the major breaches in U.S. civil liberties.
Michael Tigar:
- There is now a systematic breaking down of all barriers against government intrusion into the private lives of people.
- Alien Enemy Combatants: A creation of a new class of people who are thought to be utterly right-less, both as to whether they can be detained, the conditions of their detention, and the manner in which they can be held and interrogated.
- Meanwhile, we have legal fictions such as the Vice President saying he’s neither a member of the executive or legislative branch, and therefore being subject to the rules of both is subject to the rules of neither.
- We have justice system staffed with people whose only qualification is their asserted ideological purity.
- We have two aggressive wars, all done to the tune of the most massive federal debts in history.
- This, accompanied by the largest transfer of wealth from the poor, and working class to the already wealthy, coupled with the dismantling of regulatory barriers of how greed and avarice operate.
- It is the lack of any significant organized resistance from legislators, and with some few bright exceptions, judges and lawyers that define for us the task that lies ahead.
- Eric Holder, a good lawyer, was among the group of people in the Clinton administration that even though they had all the evidence, that they would not prosecute Pinochet.
- National State Secrets: the case of journalist Quentin Reynolds who took a ride on an Air Force jet and it crashed, his widow sued under the federal tort claims act saying that she thought there was negligence. The United States convinced the Supreme Court that to disclose the reasons why that plane crashed might involve state secrets, and that she should not be able to sue.
- Sixty years later the maintenance file on that plane was on unsealed. It turned out that it was a routine maintenance error that caused the crash. Behind the curtain of states secrets is illegality and mendacity.
- How many years did it take to get Pinochet for any kind of proposed criminal accountability, almost 20, because of states secrets.
- The tort system, that is the way we enforce rules about safe products, it’s the way that we enforce the rules about the toxic substances that poison people, it’s the way that we deal with the kleptocracy that rules wall street.
- It’s so well tested – Marbury v Madison 1803 – Chief Justice Marshall said that he could decide a case was unconstitutional.
Guest – Michael Tigar, a criminal defense attorney who has represented some of the country’s most controversial clients. He is also a member of the Duke University Law School faculty.
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Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Impeachment, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Michael Ratner and Michael Steven Smith update on the media discussions of whether to prosecute the “torture conspirators”, the details of Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s collapse, and a preventive detention scheme that could replace Guantanamo prison.
- No truth commission. Insist on criminal investigations and prosecutions of torture conspirators.
- Power concedes nothing without demand, it never did and it never will.
- Mukasey gives speech about not prosecuting people during Federalist Society speech, then collapses on the stage.
- A Seattle state court judge in the federalist society audience started yelling, Tyrant! Tyrant! Tyrant!
- This was about law itself, unless you have prosecutions going forward it will happen again.
- How will Guantanamo be closed? CCR general position: Repatriate 95 percent, try the rest in federal court.
Related Articles:
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Ali Al-Marri Case Update: Key Police State Building Block At Stake
In June of this year, an en banc Federal Appeals Court in Virginia ruled 5-4 that the Bush Administration could subject Ali Al-Marri to indefinite detention even though he was a resident of the United States. The court in the fourth circuit ruled that US residents could be locked up indefinitely as enemy combatants even though they were never charged with a crime. Al-Marri is the only enemy combatant currently in detention and without charges in the United States.
Jonathan Hafetz:
- Can the president declare legal residents including American citizens, enemy combatants, deprive them a right to a trial and hold them indefinitely.
- This, based on the idea that there is a global and never ending war on terror.
- Though on sovereign soil, no right to habeas corpus. He was declared an enemy combatant, the case was lost in an embank in the fourth circuit
- Why is this case so critical to liberty in the United States . . . ?
- The five judges who ruled against the case, said essentially that there must be this power to effectively detain people in the United States to prevent terrorist attacks.
- Ruling: the president can label legal residents including American citizens an enemy combatant in the United States, without a trial, no habeas, hold them indefinitely.
- It’s the idea of the president to use the military to seize people including citizens from their home or places of work.
- A very dangerous power to allow any president to have, it corrupts the justice system, it can be used as a weapon,
- Seven years of these cases of assertion of executive power, and the courts have not answered this fundamental basic question, who can be detained by the military, who is a soldier and who is a civilian?
- All that is stated is that if someone picks up a weapon on the battlefield, that person can be a soldier, but in the most extreme cases in the war on terror – – such as being picked up in the United States as a soldier in the extended geographic concept of the war on terror – – the courts have not grappled with whether there is habeas in those cases.
- Even the judges who ruled against us did say that it included American citizens.
Guest – Jonathan Hafetz, Staff Attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, National Security Project.
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Jeremy Scahill: This Is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama’s White House
As President-elect Barack Obama starts building his administration, many are watching who he selects and how these choices will be consistent with the rhetoric of change. Hosts talk with investigative journalist and author Jeremy Scahill about his recent article calling to question the list of recent appointees to the Obama team. Some have a history of supporting torture, despite Obama calling for the shutting down of Guantanamo, and others have associations with the neo-conservative Project For The New American Century.
Jeremy Scahill:
- Clinton’s policies laid the groundwork for some of the most repressive and violent policies of the Bush era, on Iraq, civil liberties, on economic policy.
- He (Clinton) rained missles down on Iraq, bombed Yugoslavia in 1999 without UN authorization. He pushed through NAFTA and GAT, he launched airstrikes against Sudan and Afghanistan, he militarized the war on drugs, particularly the counterinsurgency war in Latin America. CIA renditions began.
- Obama is taking these same individuals who were part of that bi-partisan war machine and putting them back in prominent positions.
- Obama’s defense secretary – Robert Gates, George HW Bush’s former director of the CIA.
- What message does that send not only to the anti-war people who were a large part of Obama’s base but to those which heard Obama say we’re going to change the way Washington’s foreign policy is run?
- Henry Kissenger says it’s (Obama administration) outstanding.
- The fact that these people are praising Obama, gives us a sense of what to expect from the economic team.
- The message is clear that corporate interests are going to reign supreme, over the interests of ordinary working folks in this country.
- A total contradiction in Obama’s campaign pledge to speak up for the middle class. The reality is is that he is putting together a team with the people who are part of the problem.
- Naomi Klein: Obama represents the status quo, which is not good for people who roll up their sleeves everyday and go to work, or suffering poor
- Eric Holder, attorney general, though better than any AG the Bush Administration has appointed, Holder has worked the Chiquita Banana Co., the most vicious violators of human rights in Latin America.
- I think its incredibly important that we put tremendous pressure on the Justice Department, on the Obama Administration to actually seek out justice.
- Obama Adminstration may not prosecute “torture conspirators.” because they open themselves up to Democratic complicity. Complicity such as voting for the Patriot Act, supporting the illegal, unlawful prison in Guantanamo.
- Former Chief Assistant of the CIA, Brennen steps down from CIA director nomination, a passionate supporter of torture techniques.
- The idea that Obama even keeps him on board as one of the people who is going to decide who runs the intelligence apparatus in this country is shameful.
- It’s Orwellian, you vote for change, and you get torture and skewed intelligence.
- The reality is that Obama is not going to end the occupation in Iraq, he is going to escalate the war in Afghanistan.
- He’s not going to be great at all in holding the Bush officials accountable.
- We need to start building a movement in this country that is independent of electoral politics.
- Ultimately the premier issue of our time – Radical Privatization.
- Yes, its good that John McCain and Sarah Palin are not in power in this country but Obama is not a saint, he is a center democrat, closely tied to the democratic policy elite.
Guest – Jeremy Scahill, investigative journalist and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is also a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute and a frequent contributor to The Nation. Scahill and colleague Amy Goodman were co-recipients of the 1998 Polk Award for their radio documentary “Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria’s Oil Dictatorship”, which investigated the Chevron Corporation‘s role in the killing of two Nigerian environmental activists.
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