NYTimes.com Article: Senior Administration Officials Defend Military Tribunals for Terrorist Suspects

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It seems Uncle Dick has emerged from his undisclosed cave.

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Senior Administration Officials Defend Military Tribunals for Terrorist Suspects

November 15, 2001 

By ELISABETH BUMILLER and STEVEN LEE MYERS


 

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 - Top administration officials today
defended a presidential order allowing military tribunals
to try foreigners charged with terrorism as the Pentagon
prepared for the potential transfer of immigrants detained
by the Justice Department into military custody. 

A senior administration official said that it was possible
that immigrants held in the United States by the Justice
Department in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks would be
tried by military tribunal. Those trials could take place
outside the United States or even on ships, the official
said. 

The order, signed by President Bush on Tuesday, gives the
government sweeping powers to secretly and aggressively
prosecute suspected foreign terrorists both here and
abroad. 

Justice Department officials have repeatedly refused to
disclose the identities of those immigrants held or the
charges against them. Justice officials said late last
month that the total number of people detained - including
many who have since been released - had surpassed 1,000,
but this month officials said that they would no longer
release a running tally. 

"I had no idea they were going to try to use it for
domestically detained people," said Kevin Ernst, a Detroit
lawyer representing Farouk Ali-Hamoud, who was arrested for
fraudulent immigration documents and held for 25 days in
the Wayne County Jail before his case was dismissed last
month. "It scares the hell out of me, I'll tell you that." 

Vice President Dick Cheney defended Mr. Bush's order
today, saying that terrorists were not lawful combatants
and did not deserve the safeguards of traditional American
jurisprudence. 

"The basic proposition here is that somebody who comes into
the United States of America illegally, who conducts a
terrorist operation killing thousands of innocent Americans
- men, women and children - is not a lawful combatant," Mr.
Cheney said. 

"They don't deserve to be treated as a prisoner of war," he
added. "They don't deserve the same guarantees and
safeguards that would be used for an American citizen going
through the normal judicial process." 

While the vice president assured his audience that the
terrorist suspects would have "a fair trial," he suggested
that they did not deserve one with the same protections
afforded American citizens. A military tribunal, he said,
"guarantees that we'll have the kind of treatment of these
individuals that we believe they deserve." 

He spoke favorably of World War II saboteurs being
"executed in relatively rapid order" under military
tribunals set up by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. And he
cited an earlier precedent, noting, "This is the way we
dealt with the people who assassinated Abraham Lincoln and
tried to assassinate part of the Cabinet back in 1865." Mr.
Cheney, who was responding to a question after a speech at
the United States Chamber of Commerce, was the most senior
White House official to explain the rationale behind the
president's order. Mr. Bush, who was at his ranch in
Crawford, Tex., with President Vladimir Putin of Russia,
has not spoken publicly about it. 

The order continued to prompt an outcry from civil
libertarians, who noted that military tribunals have not
been used in this country since World War II. Laura W.
Murphy, the director of the American Civil Liberties
Union's National Office, said that the organization was
"deeply disturbed" by the order and called on Congress to
exercise oversight powers before the "Bill of Rights in
America is distorted beyond recognition." 

Bush administration officials said today that they first
considered the idea of military tribunals about a week
after the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials said that a debate
then ensued between the Pentagon and Justice Department
over who should determine who is a suspected terrorist and
therefore subject to trial by tribunal. 

Finally, officials said, it was Mr. Bush who insisted that
he, not Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld or Attorney
General John Ashcroft, be given that power. 

Administration officials said that the Pentagon and Justice
Department were preparing today for the possibility of
moving some detainees to military custody, examining such
details as where the detainees might be held and how many
judges would sit on any tribunal. 

"They are researching, preparing and looking at the
administrative procedures that would have to be followed to
take into custody a suspected terrorist held by justice,"
an administration official said. 

The idea of military tribunals came to the attention of the
White House via William P. Barr, a former attorney general
in the first Bush administration, who first conceived of
them as a way to try the two men charged with blowing up a
Pan Am jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. 

In the preparations for that trial, Mr. Barr was the chief
of the Justice Department's office of legal counsel. In an
odd twist, that office also happened to occupy the same
suite where the World War II saboteurs were secretly tried
under Roosevelt - memorialized today by a plaque on the
wall. 

"It's part of the lore of that office," Mr. Barr said.


Scotland, which does not have the death penalty, was not
interested in joining with the United States in military
tribunals, Mr. Barr said, so the idea was dropped. But
shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Barr contacted
senior officials at both the White House and the Justice
Department, suggesting they might take a look at the old
files. 

"All I did was remind them about it," Mr. Barr said. "The
idea sells itself." 

This time people were very interested, particularly as they
faced the prospect of what to do should Osama bin Laden or
his associates in Al Qaeda be captured. Administration
officials have said they did not want a long, public
American trial of Mr. bin Laden that could turn him into a
martyr or cause further terrorism in his name. 

In the weeks after Sept. 11, officials at the Pentagon and
Justice and State Departments worked on a draft of the
president's order. Late last week, officials said, the
draft began circulating. On Tuesday, the president signed
it. 

Experts in military law say the tribunals would severely
limit the rights of a defendant even beyond those in
military trials, and said that the tribunals did not
provide for proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. 

But White House officials said the tribunals were necessary
to protect potential American jurors from the danger of
passing judgment on terrorists. They also said the
tribunals would prevent the disclosure of government
intelligence methods, which normally would be public in
civilian courts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/politics/15TRIB.html?ex=1006836372&ei=1&en=18ce435db3575af9



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