NYC Terrorist Trials?

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Is this whole Deal just nutz, or what?








December 11, 2009 4:00 AM

An Irrational Act
Trying KSM in NYC will delay the verdict, and reduce the chances it is the right one.

By Andrew C. McCarthy
Here’s the biggest problem with the Obama administration’s decision to transfer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 jihadists to the civilian court system: It makes sense only if it’s being done for the wrong reasons — to provide a forum for the Left to use al-Qaeda as a vehicle to put the Bush administration on trial, to give the Left the “reckoning” that the Obama campaign promised before the 2008 election.

As a matter of law enforcement or national security, it is irrational. To demonstrate this, we need look no farther than the two principal justifications Attorney General Eric Holder has offered: the asserted need to end delay in seeking justice and the claim that a civilian trial provides the best chance for a successful prosecution.

On the matter of delay, let’s put aside for now the fact that, during the Bush years, Holder’s former firm — and many lawyers who’ve since been recruited into his Justice Department after years of volunteering their services to the nation’s enemies — used every arrow in the litigator’s quiver to delay, delegitimize, and derail war-crimes trials by military commission. Let’s also ignore the fact that by subordinating terror prosecutions to terror prevention — i.e., by prioritizing interrogation and the gathering of intelligence over appointing counsel and disclosing intelligence — we thwarted additional terror attacks and saved lives. Let’s just stick with what passes for the attorney general’s reasoning: that it has taken too long for the military courts to complete war-crimes cases and that we must change our approach to avoid unnecessary delay.


This contention makes no sense. It’s true that the trial of for KSM & Co. had not yet taken place when the Obama administration suspended the military case. But extensive commission proceedings have been under way for three years. A team of military and Justice Department lawyers has meticulously built the government’s case. The prosecutors have evaluated over half a million documents to determine admissibility and discoverability under commission rules. The elaborate process of obtaining security clearances for defense counsel had been completed, and counsel had been in place and working, notwithstanding the jihadists’ dalliance with self-representation. Tens of thousands of documents already had been provided in discovery. And, perhaps most significant, there had been extensive pretrial court hearings: over a hundred motions had been made by the accused war criminals, and those motions had been answered by the prosecution, meaning that they stood ready for the tribunal to consider.

Three years is not an unusual amount of time for all this necessary groundwork to be completed in the civilian system, certainly not in a national-security case involving voluminous foreign intelligence evidence. But here’s the thing: At this point in the commission proceeding, this work is finished. In the civilian court, by contrast, it has barely started. The terrorists have not even been indicted on a 9/11 case yet. In fact, they haven’t even appeared in court.

MORE AT: Andrew C. McCarthy on National Review Online=

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We have Employees of The Obama Justice Department who were at one time Defending some of the Man-caused Disasterers being held in Gitmo.

Now, we don't know who they were because Attorney General Holder won't say who they were.

Lawyers out there, question, Conflict of Interest?

Holder hasn't revealed Justice Dept lawyers who defended Gitmo detainees

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
01/23/10 9:08 AM EST

You may remember that more than two months ago, amid the controversy over the Obama administration's decision to grant full American constitutional rights to, and hold a civilian trial for, accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley asked Attorney General Eric Holder about Justice Department lawyers who before joining the Obama/Holder team had represented Guantanamo detainees or worked for groups representing them. Grassley pointed to one high-ranking Obama Justice official who formerly represented Osama bin Laden's driver and another who works on detainee issues despite previous advocacy for detainees.

"This prior representation, I think, creates a conflict of interest problem for these individuals," Grassley said, adding, "I want to know more about who is advising you on these decisions." Grassley asked Holder to give the committee "the names of political appointees in your department who represent detainees or who work for organizations advocating on their behalf…the cases or projects that these appointees work with respect to detainee prior to joining the Justice Department…and the cases or projects relating to detainees that have worked on since joining the Justice Department."

Holder was noncommittal. "I will certainly consider that request," he said.

When Grassley pressed, Holder stood firm. "I will consider that request," he repeated. Later in the hearing, Holder revisited the subject, saying he "didn't mean to be flip" in responding to Grassley but that he wanted to consider possible ethical concerns about attorney-client privilege before agreeing to Grassley's request. Holder never said he would provide the information. A few days later, on November 24, Grassley and the other Republican members of the Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Holder citing his "less than encouraging" response and pressing the request for information on the detainee conflicts inside the Department.

Now, two months have passed and the senators have heard nothing.

"Sen. Grassley does not have an answer yet," says a Grassley spokesman. "The Justice Department says it's 'in process.'" The Justice Department did not respond to an inquiry about the matter Friday, and it is not clear when the Department will answer Grassley's questions.

In the meantime, committee Republicans are starting to wait for Holder's response to another letter, sent yesterday, asking for an explanation of the decision to hold accused al Qaeda Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in the civilian justice system instead of as an enemy combatant. Taken together, the inquiries show Republicans growing increasingly assertive about questioning the Obama administration's actions and resolve in fighting what the GOP still calls the War on Terror.

Unless Holder can offer convincing explanations for the Department's recent decisions, the questions will keep coming.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Holder-hasnt-revealed-Justice-Dept-lawyers-who-defended-Gitmo-detainees-82504837.html#ixzz0dSm7zMeZ

[Maximus]

And now libs, its time to move from NY. The President is a brief populist? Realist? Pragmatist? What say you?

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FEBRUARY 9, 2010

Cheney's Revenge

The Obama Administration is vindicating Bush antiterror policy.

"As long as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were responsible for keeping Americans safe, Democrats could pander to the U.S. and European left's anti-antiterror views at little political cost. But now that they are responsible, American voters are able to see what the left really has in mind, and they are saying loud and clear that they prefer the Cheney method." - Wall Street Journal

ENTIRE ARTICLE: President Obama's Antiterror Policies - WSJ.com

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FROM: Investors.com - Stocks, Investing, Business, and Finance News

"From the dropping of a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party to the decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Muhammed in a civilian court within blocks of where the World Trade Center once stood, the actions and attitudes of the Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder toward the thugs and terrorists who threaten us has grown curiouser and curiouser."

DOJ: Department Of Jihad?

Posted 02/24/2010 06:59 PM ET


War On Terror: The Justice Department employs nine lawyers previously involved in the defense of terrorist detainees. This is a colossal conflict of interest. Just whose side are they on?

From the dropping of a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party to the decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Muhammed in a civilian court within blocks of where the World Trade Center once stood, the actions and attitudes of the Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder toward the thugs and terrorists who threaten us has grown curiouser and curiouser.

We may now have a clue as to why. Last November, Sen. Charles Grassley, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked the Justice Department how many of its lawyers had defended terrorist detainees over whom the department holds sway.

Grassley knew from earlier press reports of two such lawyers who worked on behalf of detainees at the liberal organization Human Rights Watch. He wanted to know how many more there were. Last Friday, Holder answered nine.

"To the best of our knowledge, during their employment prior to joining the government, only five of the lawyers who serve as political appointees in those components represented detainees," Holder said in a letter dated Feb. 18. "Four others contributed to amicus briefs in detainee-related cases involved in advocacy on behalf of detainees."

So the decision to Mirandize the Christmas bomber, Umar Abdulmutallab, and to quickly get him lawyered up was made by a department populated by leftist lawyers who believe terror is a law enforcement matter and who have tried to get off those actively trying to kill us.

We still have no official answer to what the Justice Department would do if Osama bin Laden were captured.

"It's like they're bringing al-Qaida lawyers inside the Department of Justice," said Debra Burlingame, whose brother was the pilot of the plane driven by terrorists into the Pentagon, following KSM's plan.

We still have not been told all the lawyers' names. Like the detainees they represented, presumably they have the right to remain silent. So much for transparency.

Lawyers in private practice are free to choose their clients and their reasons for defending them. But these lawyers are in the employ of the American people and have the task of prosecuting those who try to kill them. Some chose to defend enemies who are making war on America. We have a right to know who they are, who their clients were and why they defended them.

As Michelle Malkin reports, Holder is a former partner at Covington & Burling, a law firm that contributed more than 3,000 hours to detainee litigation in 2007 alone. The firm has worked on behalf of a dozen Yemenite detainees who are seeking civilian trials on American soil.
Holder played a central role in the granting of clemency to 16 FALN terrorists in 1999, when he worked for the Clinton Justice Department. The terrorists claimed responsibility for more than 130 bombings and incendiary attacks in the U.S. and Puerto Rico from 1974 to 1983, killing six and wounding scores.

As deputy attorney general, Holder was responsible for signing off on all clemency matters forwarded to the president. In this case, he recommended that clemency be granted despite vehement opposition from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Prisons and his own Justice Department.

We are reminded of the case of Lynne Stewart, attorney for Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the "blind sheikh" who was the architect of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. She was later found guilty of charges she had illegally "facilitated and concealed communications" between Rahman and his fellow terrorists.

We wonder if she could have found a job in the Holder Justice Department.

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While You Are Distracted by the Summit, Obama Democrats Are Targeting the CIA

Andy McCarthy


The Obama Democrats have outdone themselves.

While the country and the Congress have their eyes on today’s dog-and-pony show on socialized medicine, House Democrats last night stashed a new provision in the intelligence bill which is to be voted on today. It is an attack on the CIA: the enactment of a criminal statute that would ban “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” (See here, scoll to p. 32.)

The provision is impossibly vague — who knows what “degrading” means? Proponents will say that they have itemized conduct that would trigger the statute (I’ll get to that in a second), but it is not true. The proposal says the conduct reached by the statute “includes but is not limited to” the itemized conduct. (My italics.) That means any interrogation tactic that a prosecutor subjectively believes is “degrading” (e.g., subjecting a Muslim detainee to interrogation by a female CIA officer) could be the basis for indicting a CIA interrogator.

The act goes on to make it a crime to use tactics that have been shown to be effective in obtaining life saving information and that are far removed from torture.

“Waterboarding” is specified. In one sense, I’m glad they’ve done this because it proves a point I’ve been making all along. Waterboarding, as it was practiced by the CIA, is not torture and was never illegal under U.S. law. The reason the Democrats are reduced to doing this is: what they’ve been saying is not true — waterboarding was not a crime and it was fully supported by congressional leaders of both parties, who were told about it while it was being done. On that score, it is interesting to note that while Democrats secretly tucked this provision into an important bill, hoping no one would notice until it was too late, they failed to include in the bill a proposed Republican amendment that would have required full and complete disclosure of records describing the briefings members of Congress received about the Bush CIA’s enhanced interrogation program. Those briefings, of course, would establish that Speaker Pelosi and others knew all about the program and lodged no objections. Naturally, members of Congress are not targeted by this criminal statute — only the CIA.

More to the point, this shows how politicized law-enforcement has become under the Obama Democrats. They could have criminalized waterboarding at any time since Jan. 20, 2009. But they waited until now. Why? Because if they had tried to do it before now, it would have been a tacit admission that waterboarding was not illegal when the Bush CIA was using it. That would have harmed the politicized witch-hunt against John Yoo and Jay Bybee, a key component of which was the assumption that waterboarding and the other tactics they authorizied were illegal. Only now, when that witch-hunt has collapsed, have the Democrats moved to criminalize these tactics. It is transparently partisan.

In any event, waterboarding is not defined in the bill. As Marc Thiessen has repeatedly demonstrated, there is a world of difference between the tactic as administered by the CIA and the types of water-torture methods that have been used throughout history. The waterboarding method used by the CIA involved neither severe pain nor prolonged mental harm. But it was highly unpleasant and led especially hard cases like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (i.e., well-trained, committed, America-hating terrorists) to give us information that saved American lives. The method was used sparingly — on only three individuals, and not in the last seven years. The American people broadly support the availability of this non-torture tactic in a dire emergency. Yet Democrats not only want to make it unavailable; they want to subject to 15 years’ imprisonment any interrogator who uses it.

What’s more, the proposed bill is directed at “any officer or employee of the intelligence community” conducting a “covered interrogation.” The definition of “covered interrogation” is sweeping — including any interrogation done outside the U.S., in the course of a person’s official duties on behalf of the government. Thus, if the CIA used waterboarding in training its officers or military officers outside the U.S., this would theoretically be indictable conduct under the statute.

Waterboarding is not all. The Democrats’ bill would prohibit — with a penalty of 15 years’ imprisonment — the following tactics, among others:

- “Exploiting the phobias of the individual”
- Stress positions and the threatened use of force to maintain stress positions
- “Depriving the individual of necessary food, water, sleep, or medical care”
- Forced nudity
- Using military working dogs (i.e., any use of them — not having them attack or menace the individual; just the mere presence of the dog if it might unnerve the detainee and, of course, “exploit his phobias”)
- Coercing the individual to blaspheme or violate his religious beliefs (I wonder if Democrats understand the breadth of seemingly innocuous matters that jihadists take to be violations of their religious beliefs)
- Exposure to “excessive” cold, heat or “cramped confinement” (excessive and cramped are not defined)
- “Prolonged isolation”
- “Placing hoods or sacks over the head of the individual”

Naturally, all of these tactics are interspersed with such acts as forcing the performance of sexual acts, beatings, electric shock, burns, inducing hypothermia or heat injury — as if all these acts were functionally equivalent.

In true Alinskyite fashion, Democrats begin this attack on the CIA by saluting “the courageous men and women who serve honorably as intelligence personnel and as members of our nation’s Armed Forces” who “deserve the full support of the United States Congress.” Then, Democrats self-servingly tell us that Congress “shows true support” by providing “clear legislation relating to standards for interrogation techniques.” I’m sure the intelligence community will be duly grateful.

Democrats also offer “findings” that the tactics they aim to prohibit cause terrorism by fueling recruitment (we are never supposed to discuss the Islamist ideology that actually causes terrorist recruitment, only the terrible things America does to provide pretexts for those spurred by that ideology). These “findings” repeat the canards that these tactics don’t work; that they place our captured forces in greater danger (the truth is our forces captured by terrorists will be abused and probably killed no matter what we do, while our enemies captured in a conventional war will be bound to adhere to their Geneva Convention commitments — and will have the incentive to do so because they will want us to do the same); and that “their use runs counter to our identity and values as a nation.”

Unmentioned by the Obama Democrats is that officers of the executive branch have a solemn moral duty to honor their commitment to protect the American people from attack by America’s enemies. If there are non-torture tactics that can get a Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to give us information that saves American lives, how is the use of them inconsistent with our values?

Here is the fact: Democrats are saying they would prefer to see tens of thousands of Americans die than to see a KSM subjected to sleep-deprivation or to have his “phobias exploited.” I doubt that this reflects the values of most Americans.