Dear Solstice,
In the Voter Guide we prepared for last year’s
presidential election, we explained a crucial distinction between John
McCain and Barack Obama with respect to how to classify captured suspected
terrorists.
************************* Solsticewitch13 = here is the link to the 2008 Congressional Score Card, at the ACT for America website http://www.actforamerica.org/index.php/congressional-scorecard ***************************
McCain’s position was to treat them as “enemy
combatants” – in effect, as prisoners of war. The fact that they may not
wear a uniform or fight under a nation’s flag is irrelevant. McCain’s
position, with which we agree, is that foreign citizens who are plotting
terrorist actions against the United States are not engaged in “criminal”
actions that merit the full range of constitutional protections afforded
alleged criminals here in the U.S., but are enemies who are at war with
us.
Obama’s position was to treat them as suspected criminals and
thus afford them that full range of constitutional protections.
Ideas have consequences, and the Weekly Standard article below
exposes a very dangerous consequence of classifying suspected foreign
terrorists as alleged “criminals” rather than suspected “enemy
combatants.” The “rights” of suspected terrorists are trumping the rights
of Americans to be protected from the actions of these enemy combatants.
Without a doubt America will be less safe as a result.
Miranda Rights for Terrorists
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/06/miranda_rights_for_terrorists.asp
When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March
1, 2003, he was not cooperative. “I’ll talk to you guys after I get to New
York and see my lawyer,” he said, according to former CIA Director George
Tenet.
Of course, KSM did not get a lawyer until months later,
after his interrogation was completed, and Tenet says that the information
the CIA obtained from him disrupted plots and saved lives. “I believe none
of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a
white-collar criminal – read him his Miranda rights and get
him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut
up,” Tenet wrote in his memoirs.
If Tenet is right, it’s a good
thing KSM was captured before Barack Obama became president. For, the
Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read
Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at
U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on
the House Intelligence Committee. “The administration has decided to
change the focus to law enforcement. Here’s the problem. You have foreign
fighters who are targeting US troops today – foreign fighters who go to
another country to kill Americans. We capture them…and they’re reading
them their rights – Mirandizing these foreign fighters,” says
Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence
and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.
Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the
Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. “I was a
little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we
hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it. We’re still trying to
get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global
justice initiative.”
That effort, which elevates the FBI and other
law enforcement agencies and diminishes the role of intelligence and
military officials, was described in a May 28 Los Angeles
Times article.
The FBI and Justice Department plan to significantly expand their
role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a U.S. policy shift
that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and
interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and
prosecutions.
Under the "global justice" initiative, which has
been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role
in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will expand their questioning of
suspects and evidence-gathering to try to ensure that criminal
prosecutions are an option, officials familiar with the effort said.
Thanks in part to the popularity of law and order television shows
and movies, many Americans are familiar with the Miranda
warning – so named because of the landmark 1966 Supreme Court case
Miranda vs. Arizona that required police
officers and other law enforcement officials to advise suspected criminals
of their rights.
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you
say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right
to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any
questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you
at government expense.
A lawyer who has worked on detainee issues
for the U.S. government offers this rationale for the Obama
administration’s approach. “If the US is mirandizing certain suspects in
Afghanistan, they’re likely doing it to ensure that the treatment of the
suspect and the collection of information is done in a manner that will
ensure the suspect can be prosecuted in a US court at some point in the
future.”
But Republicans on Capitol Hill are not happy. “When they
mirandize a suspect, the first thing they do is warn them that they have
the 'right to remain silent,’” says Representative Pete Hoekstra, the
ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “It would seem the
last thing we want is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other al-Qaeda
terrorist to remain silent. Our focus should be on preventing the next
attack, not giving radical jihadists a new tactic to resist
interrogation--lawyering up.”
According to Mike Rogers, that is
precisely what some human rights organizations are advising detainees to
do. “The International Red Cross, when they go into these detention
facilities, has now started telling people – ‘Take the option. You want a
lawyer.’”
Rogers adds: “The problem is you take that guy at three
in the morning off of a compound right outside of Kabul where he’s
building bomb materials to kill US soldiers, and read him his rights by
four, and the Red Cross is saying take the lawyer – you have now created
quite a confusion amongst the FBI, the CIA and the United States military.
And confusion is the last thing you want in a combat zone.”
One
thing is clear, though. A detainee who is not talking cannot provide
information about future attacks. Had Khalid Sheikh Mohammad had a lawyer,
Tenet wrote, “I am confident that we would have obtained none of the
information he had in his head about imminent threats against the American
people.”
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