Eric Holder’s Defense of Ashcroft to Defend the Material Witness Statute

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The NYT has a worthwhile editorial lambasting the Obama DOJ’s pursuit of SCOTUS review in Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, which will probably result in expanded immunity for government officials that abuse the law so as to abuse the rights of Americans. The editorial focuses closely on the way in which DOJ’s defense of absolute immunity amounts to a defense of using the material witness law as an improper basis for detention.

Prosecutorial immunity is intended to let prosecutors enforce the law without fear of being held personally liable. Protecting that legitimate aim did not require the administration to defend the indefensible. In forcefully defending the material witness statute on grounds that curtailing it would severely limit its usefulness, it is defending the law as a basis for detention. That leaves the disturbing impression that the administration is trying to preserve the option of abusing the statute again.

In other words, NYT argues that DOJ’s SCOTUS appeal in this case is as much about preserving the improper use of the material witness statute–to hold a person under the material witness statute so you can conduct an investigation into him–as it is about the immunity per se.

Of course it is.

After all, this is what Eric Holder (along with Janet Reno and two others) had to say about the material witness statute in 2004.

Even when there is insufficient evidence to charge a citizen with a crime, the material witness statute, 18 U.S.C. § 3144, permits the detention of a person whose testimony is “material in a criminal proceeding” if “it may become impracticable to secure the presence of the person by subpoena.” This statute is an effective counter-terrorism tool for several reasons. Because a grand jury investigation is a “criminal proceeding” for purposes of this statute, see United States v. Awadallah, 349 F.3d 42, 49-64 (2d Cir. 2003); Bacon v. United States, 449 F.2d 933, 939-41 (9th Cir. 1971), and because of the broad scope of grand jury investigations, see supra p. 11, the government can detain a suspected terrorist as a material witness before it has evidence sufficient to support a criminal arrest or indictment.

The government can obtain a material witness warrant with relative ease. For a grand jury witness, the required showing can be made by a good faith statement by a prosecutor or investigating agent that the witness has information material to the grand jury. Bacon, 449 F.2d at 943; Awadallah, 349 F.3d at 65-66. Nor would establishing that a suspected terrorist poses a flight risk be an onerous task. See 349 F.3d at 69 (bail denied in part because witness failed to come forward with material testimony concerning terrorist attack). [my emphasis]

Mind you, in its Cert Petition, the government doesn’t admit that the material statute really was used in al-Kidd’s case to hold him even though the government had insufficient evidence to do so.

First, respondent claimed that, in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, petitioner implemented a policy of using the material witness statute as a pretextual tool to investigate and detain terrorism suspects whom the government lacked probable cause to charge criminally. Respondent alleged that he was arrested as a result of this alleged policy, which he contended violated the Fourth Amendment. [my emphasis]

So even though a document–signed by the current Attorney General at a time when al-Kidd was still subject to restricted movement–boasts about how easy it is to use of the material witness statute to hold people without sufficient evidence to do so, DOJ calls this use of the material witness statute “alleged.”

I guess if they admitted this was an intentional policy, it’d be harder to get SCOTUS to wink at its use going forward.

Update: harpie’s right. This is an editorial, not an op-ed.

If DOD’s Got a Problem with Wikileaked Names, They’ve Got a Problem w/NYT

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HTML tutorial

Before the Wikileaks document dump this afternoon, DOD and Murdoch were out with claims that the impending dump would put 300 Iraqis at significant risk of reprisal. As Wikileaks noted via Twitter, the article falsely claimed that Wikileaks would reveal actual names.

Besides, if DOD has a problem with leaks, they likely have a problem with the NYT, not Wikileaks.

I discovered this by looking at both outlets’ version of the same report, the July 31, 2009 report on the capture by Iranians of three American hikers.

Here’s the NYT version of the report (at least as it appeared at around 8PM tonight); here’s a PDF, or click on the image for a full image of the report. Here’s the version included in Wikileaks’ database (you probably need to sign up for a password to get it; to search for it, look for the document by time at 10:00 on 31 July 2009).

At first read, here’s the information that is redacted in the Wiki version but which appears in the NYT version (please tell me if you see something I’ve missed):

  • Indication–AMCIT–that the people kidnapped were American citizens
  • Information that appears to show injury/damage report: 0 INJ/DAM 2/1 07:112
  • The location of the kidnapping (NYT redacts part of this, but leaves Sulaymaniyah/Halabjah unredacted)
  • The identification of the captured people as 3 American citizens, where they were being taken (to the Iranian border)
  • Three reports of the coordinates where the hikers were taken (see Updates at 1630, 1631, 1715)
  • The acronym JPRC and the detail that the hikers had come to Iraq–though Wiki does reveal they intended to go rock climbing
  • Acronyms describing who would set up checkpoints
  • The name–“Meckfessel”–of the person who provides more info on the hikers–he was the fourth hiker (note, NYT puts this in quotes); but note that Wiki includes the following which NYT doesn’t include:

receive additional ___ from him and take him to a secure location for rotary transport to FOB Warrior.

  • That the hikers were hiking the “Ahmad al Waha (variant Waaha, Waah, etc.) Rock face outside of Sulaymaniyah (note, NYT does not close that quotation mark around Ahmad al Waha)
  • That “Pathfinder” was en route to refuel at FOB Warrior and that they would “remain” on standby
  • The bolded details in the update, “Colonel Latif of the 10th Pesh Murga brigade reports Iranians detained 3X AMCIT for being too close to the border”
  • The detail that “CJ3” was reporting that “President Barzani” was notified
  • Reference to Pathfinder and F16s and the detail that the AWT was 5 minutes out
  • Wiki then includes the following details from the pursuit that NYT redacted entirely:

UPDATE ___: Current situation

-2x ___ on station (controlled by /___ CAV)

-1x Warrior Alpha: en route (___ by MND-___)

–CF have ___ manned and ___ unmanned ISR on station

–CF en route ___ HQ to link up with ___.

-1x AWT on standby at FOB warrior

-1x ___ team on standby at FOB Warrior

  • The detail that OSINT was reporting that Iranians had reported picking up the Americans
  • More references to Meckfessel being picked up and, ultimately, delivered to Baghdad
  • MND-N’s confirmation they will “C2” the recovery operations
  • Wiki includes the following that NYT redacts entirely:

UPDATE 311815JUL09: ___ is at ___ HQ–made link up with , ___ x CF personnel on site, ___ to a secure location, ___ digit grid when ___ is designated

  • Details about taking Meckfessel to PB Andrea and from there, on a C12, to Baghdad
  • Read more →

CIA Had Warning on Khost Attack, Will Not Hold Anyone Responsible

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Jordanian intelligence warned the CIA that Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the Khost bomber, might be working for al Qaeda three weeks before al-Balawi killed 7 CIA people in the attack. But because the CIA still suffers from the same information sharing shortcomings problems that prevented it from finding out about 9/11, the CIA still allowed al-Balawi onto their forward operating base.

Three weeks before a Jordanian double agent set off a bomb at a remote Central Intelligence Agency base in eastern Afghanistan last December, a C.I.A. officer in Jordan received warnings that the man might be working for Al Qaeda, according to an investigation into the deadly attack.

But the C.I.A. officer did not tell his bosses of the suspicions — brought to the Americans by a Jordanian intelligence officer — that the man might try to lure Americans into a trap, according to the recently completed investigation by the agency.

But the CIA is not holding anyone responsible for this horrible lapse, partly because the station chief killed in the attack would have received much of the blame.

Mr. Panetta said that the report did not recommend holding a single person or group of individuals directly accountable for “systemic failures.”

“This is a war,” he said, adding that it is important for the C.I.A. to continue to take on risky missions.

[snip]

Current and former C.I.A. officials said that the decision not to hold officers directly responsible for the bombing was partly informed by an uncomfortable truth: some of them might have been among those killed in the bombing.

The officials said there was particular sensitivity about how much fault to assign to Jennifer Matthews, a Qaeda expert who was the chief of the Khost base.

Before you accept that explanation, re-read the piece that Bob Baer wrote on the Khost killing in April. He attributes the lapses to the de-professionalization of operations within CIA, and argues that Matthews (whom he calls Kathy) was set up to fail.

On January 10, 2010, CIA director Leon Panetta wrote a Washington Post op-ed in which he disputed that poor tradecraft was a factor in the Khost tragedy. Panetta is wrong.

An old operative I used to work with in Beirut said he would have picked up Balawi himself and debriefed him in his car, arguing that any agent worth his salt would never expose the identity of a valued asset to a foreigner like the Afghan driver. I pointed out that if he’d been there and done it that way, he’d probably be dead now. “It’s better than what happened,” he said.

One thing that should have raised doubts about Balawi was that he had yet to deliver any truly damaging intelligence on Al Qaeda, such as the location of Zawahiri or the plans for the Northwest bomb plot. Balawi provided just enough information to keep us on the hook, but never enough to really hurt his true comrades. And how was it that Balawi got Al Qaeda members to pose for pictures? This should have been another sign. These guys don’t like their pictures taken. So there were a few clear reasons not to trust Balawi, or at least to deal with him with extreme caution.

But the most inexplicable error was to have met Balawi by committee. Informants should always be met one-on-one. Always.

The fact is that Kathy, no matter how courageous and determined, was in over her head. This does not mean she was responsible for what happened. She was set up to fail. The battlefield was tilted in Al Qaeda’s favor long ago—by John Deutch and his reforms, by the directors who followed him, by the decision to drop the paramilitary course from the mandatory curriculum (which would have made Kathy a lot more wary of explosives), and by two endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have worn the CIA down to a nub. Had Kathy spent more time in the field, more time running informants, maybe even been stung by one or two bad doubles, the meeting in Khost probably would have been handled differently—and at the very least there would have been one dead rather than eight.

And while two of the recommendations Leon Panetta offered in response to the investigation was to provide more training on counterintelligence and to make sure veterans are involved in the most critical counterterrorism operations, that doesn’t address what Baer, at least says needs to happen: fixing the entire career path of CIA professionals out in the field.

Is not holding anyone responsible for this horrible mistake about protecting a CIA officer who died after being set up to fail? Or protecting her superiors who put her in that position?

CIA Sues over Whistleblower Book

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Jeff Stein reports that, after months of rumors this would happen, the CIA has sued Ishmael Jones for publishing The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture without approval from CIA’s review board.

The Justice Department suit, on behalf of the spy agency, seeks “an injunction against any further violations of ‘Jones’ secrecy obligations and recovery of the proceeds from the unauthorized publication.”

It cited as precedent Snepp vs. United States, the 1980 Supreme Court decision against former CIA officer Frank Snepp that validated the agency requirement that employees submit their writings for approval as a fiduciary obligation.

As a result of the decision, the government was able to seize Snepp’s profits from the book. Snepp subsequently wrote a second book, “Irreparable Harm: A Firsthand Account of How One Agent Took on the CIA in an Epic Battle Over Free Speech,” which was cleared by the agency.

Like Snepp, whose memoir “Decent Interval” harshly criticized CIA activities at the end of the Vietnam War, Jones maintains that his book contained “no classified information.”

He said he used a pseudonym because “I was under deep cover for most of my career, so to use my real name might expose people I’ve met.”

Publishing the book without approval was necessitated because “there are no viable whistleblower mechanisms within the CIA,” he said.

I guess, unlike Bob Woodward, Jones is one of the people whom the President won’t allow to leak secrets.

Unconstitutional Surveillance & United States v. U.S. District Court: Who The Winner Is May Be A Secret – Part 1

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[Given the current surveillance state situation in America, the Keith case, formally known as United States v. United States District Court, is one of the most important cases from our recent past. But I don’t really believe you can understand or know the law of a case, without really understanding the facts. The Keith case doesn’t have simple facts, but they are fascinating and instructive. So bear with me – this is going to take awhile, and will be laid out over a series of four posts. What follows today is Part I. – Mary]

It was a time of war. America had been attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin. The National Security Agency (NSA) and our military had reassured us this was true. Our national security apparatus, Congress and press had joined behind the office of the President to lead us into a series of forays (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia) that would leave tens of thousands of American soldiers dead and many times that wounded physically or mentally, while at the same time decimating over three million Vietnamese and over a 1.5 million Laotians and Cambodians.

At home, we were working our way through the civil rights movement, dealing with the cold war and threats of Russian nuclear weapons and witnessing anti-war protests that left students dead and buildings bombed. Algeria was hosting U.S. fugitives from justice, Eldridge Cleaver and Timothy Leary, while Cuban connections were alleged to be behind much of the organized anti-war movement.

Court martial proceedings had begun for the My Lai killings with polls showing most of America objected to the trial. President Nixon would later pardon Lt. Calley for his role. A trial had also, briefly, seemed to be in the works for the “Green Beret Affair,” the killing of Thai Khac Chuyen by Green Berets running an intelligence program called Project GAMMA. The investigation began after one of the soldiers assigned to the Project became convinced that he was also being scheduled for termination. Charges in the Green Beret Affair would be dropped after the CIA refused to make personnel available, claiming national security privileges.

Against this backdrop, Nixon and his campaign manager – attorney general, John Mitchell (the only Read more →

The Compromise Intelligence Authorization

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As DDay noted, it looks like we’ll finally have an intelligence authorization bill. The bill is a partial win for Speaker Pelosi, as it makes full briefing to the Intelligence Committees within six months of the start of a program the default (though the Administration can still avoid doing so if it provides written rationale). And it includes at least a nod to Pelosi’s demand that GAO be giving some authority to review intelligence programs. Steven Aftergood calls the GAO access “a foothold.”

The Act (in section 348) requires the Director of National Intelligence to prepare a directive on GAO access to intelligence community information — thereby setting the stage for a stable new role for the GAO in intelligence agency audits and reviews.In a letter to Congress (reprinted in the record of the floor debate) withdrawing the threat of a veto, ODNI General Counsel Robert S. Litt stressed that the new directive would not imply any change in existing law or GAO authority. He added that the new directive would also conform with “relevant opinions of the Office of Legal Counsel.” However, the only OLC opinion on the subject is from 1988, and it argued that GAO access to intelligence information is “precluded” by law. It hardly seems likely that the new directive would affirm that view.

Instead, the required directive should be seen as analogous to the recently updated Pentagon directive that permitted GAO access to highly classified special access programs,

It remains to be seen whether this compromise will give Congress enough new oversight powers to prevent the abuses that happened under Bush (and heck–I assume the Gang of Four, if not the Gang of Eight–has signed off on assassinating US citizens solely on the President’s say so, so it’s not clear that oversight will be any use in protecting the Constitution). But Jeff Stein reports both Pelosi and DiFi declaring victory, while the White House and DOD remain silent. Here’s Pelosi:

“In passing the Intelligence Authorization Act last night, the Senate upheld our first responsibility – to ensure the security of the American people – while addressing two key objectives,” Pelosi said in a statement Tuesday.

“It expands and improves the congressional notification process for covert action and provides the framework for GAO access to intelligence community information so that the GAO can conduct investigations, audits, and evaluations as requested by Congress,” Pelosi said.

Again, I remain skeptical, but at least this is better than nothing.

Think of it this way. Under these rules, the Bush White House would have had to tell the entire Intelligence Committees they were systematically torturing prisoners by February 1, 2003 (or at least admit in writing they hadn’t and wouldn’t inform the committees, rather than altering documents after the fact to pretend they had). Technically, they would have to have informed Congress of the September 17, 2001 finding dubiously used to authorize the torture program by March 17, 2002. As it happened, they apparently didn’t brief any Democrats that they were torturing prisoners until February 5, 2003, at which point the one they did brief (Jane Harman) objected in writing (and asked whether the President had signed off on the policy, which presumably meant she had never been briefed on the actual finding). We know Bob Graham had been proposing oversight of the interrogation program by that point, backed by a majority of the committee, even though he had no clue they were torturing (though Tony Blair apparently did). So it’s possible Congress would have at least demanded more information sooner about the torture under this system.

That may not have been enough to forestall Dick Cheney’s torture program. But it might have subjected it to at least a little more review.

At which point–as presumably has happened on Presidential hit lists–the blame for our egregious abuse of the Constitution would be more widely shared.

Congratulations, Intelligence Committees: you now share in the moral responsibility to protect the Constitution. Please take that responsibility seriously.

Obama’s Still Obfuscating about Domestic Surveillance

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Adam Serwer does a pretty thorough job debunking Obama’s lame effort to defend his civil liberties record.

When people start being concerned about, “You haven’t closed Guantánamo yet,” I say, listen, that’s something I wanted to get done by now, and I haven’t gotten done because of recalcitrance from the other side. Frankly, it’s an easy issue to demagogue. But what I have been able to do is to ban torture. I have been able to make sure that our intelligence agencies and our military operate under a core set of principles and rules that are true to our traditions of due process. People will say, “I don’t know — you’ve got your Justice Department out there that’s still using the state secrets doctrine to defend against some of these previous actions.” Well, I gave very specific instructions to the Department of Justice. What I’ve said is that we are not going to use a shroud of secrecy to excuse illegal behavior on our part. On the other hand, there are occasions where I’ve got to protect operatives in the field, their sources and their methods, because if those were revealed in open court, they could be subject to very great danger. There are going to be circumstances in which, yes, I can’t have every operation that we’re engaged in to deal with a very real terrorist threat. [my emphasis]

But I wanted to add one thing.

Obama suggests his Administration has only invoked state secrets to protect “operatives in the field.”

That’s the case only in one of the most notable state secrets invocations the Administration has made or sustained. Consider:

  • Jeppesen Dataplan
  • Al-Haramain
  • Al-Awlaki

I’ll grant that one of the things the Administration refuses to publicize about the al-Awlaki case is how they know what they know. And we know there are covert teams operating in Yemen, so it is probable that one of the things–though certainly not the only thing–they are protecting are those operatives in the field.

But in Jeppesen Dataplan, the government is protecting a publicly traded company from the backlash it would experience if its role in torture were confirmed. And it is protecting the governments that tortured on our behalf: Egypt and Morocco.

The government’s invocation of state secrets in al-Haramain has even less to do with protecting operatives in the field. In that case, the government is (again) protecting publicly traded companies from even more certain backlash from consumers. And it is protecting the details about how and the extent to which the government conducts domestic surveillance and data mining. The government is not protecting operatives in the field at all. On the contrary, the government is protecting itself from the wrath of its citizens. (He’s also protecting the prior Administration, including his current top terrorism advisor, John Brennan.)

And to hide that fact–to try to legitimize his government’s secrecy–Obama invents a largely bogus concern about men and women risking their lives overseas.

Though I guess I shouldn’t be surprised about that fact. After all, Obama’s flip-flop on FISA was the first big disappointment, the first promise he broke. From that point, it was clear Obama would place political considerations ahead of his stated commitment to civil liberties.

Which is, I guess, what his lame defense is all about.

This Raid on Peace Activists Brought to You By Elena Kagan

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This article not only describes the hundreds of people who protested FBI raids of peace activists last week, but it provides more detail on what the FBI was looking for.

Agents were seeking “evidence relating to activities concerning the material support of terrorism,” the FBI said. Chicago FBI spokesman Ross Rice declined on Monday to discuss what agents were looking for, citing an “ongoing criminal investigation.” There have been no arrests.

Search warrants and subpoenas indicate authorities are looking for connections between the activists and groups including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Hezbollah. The U.S. government considers those groups to be terrorist organizations.

[snip]

Sundin said Monday she met FARC rebels when she visited Colombia in 2000, but noted that the Colombian government was holding peace talks at the time with the rebels, who held public forums where she met them. She said she has had no contacts with FARC since.

Kelly and Sundin acknowledged they’re active in the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a group named in several warrants that openly supports FARC and PFLP and shares their Marxist ideologies. Two groups use the name after a 1999 split. They said their Freedom Road is a small group, but that they weren’t sure how many supporters it has. Kelly edits its newspaper.

These descriptions suggest that the FBI is raiding a bunch of peace activists it tracked during the RNC Convention to establish attenuated ties between them and at least three groups on the Foreign Terrorist Organization list.

What’s particularly interesting is the description of the work these activists were doing in Palestine and Colombia.

“We meet with human rights activists in other countries to get understanding of situations they face,” said Yorek.

Sundin said committee members use the trips to gather information that the group then uses in presentations to the public back in the United States.

“All trips always been very public,” Sundin said.

Aby said that in Palestine, committee members met with the Palestinian Women’s Commission and another group that advocates for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. In Colombia, she said members met with representatives of Colombian unions.

“In Colombia, you’re considered to be a FARC supporter if you’re a member of a union,” Aby said. Critics of current Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos or former president Alvaro Uribe were also considered supporters of the FARC by Colombian authorities.

That is, after meeting with groups that the authorities in the country have an incentive to claim are terrorist groups, they come back to the US and publicize the conditions in the country.

Law Professor Peter Erlinder has said repeatedly precisely what I’ve been thinking about these raids since they happened: SCOTUS’ decision in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project probably made such activities (which appear to have all happened before the decision in the case) illegal.

Congress has prohibited the provision of “material support or resources” to certain foreign organizations that engage in terrorist activity. 18 U. S. C. §2339B(a)(1). That prohibition is based on a finding that the specified organizations “are so tainted by their criminal conduct that any contribution to such an organization facilitates that conduct.” Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), §301(a)(7), 110 Stat. 1247, note following 18 U. S. C. §2339B (Findings and Purpose). The plaintiffs in this litigation seek to provide support to two such organizations. Plaintiffs claim that they seek to facilitate only the lawful, nonviolent purposes of those groups, and that applying the material-support law to prevent them from doing so violates the Constitution. In particular, they claim that the statute is too vague, in violation of the Fifth Amendment, and that it infringes their rights to freedom of speech and association, in violation of the First Amendment. We conclude that the material-support statute is constitutional as applied to the particular activities plaintiffs have told us they wish to pursue. We do not, however, address the resolution of more difficult cases that may arise under the statute inthe future.

Obviously, the six justices (the conservatives plus Stevens) who made peace activism material support for terrorism deserve the bulk of the blame for this decision. But this was also the argument where then Solicitor General Elena Kagan advocated for the broadest interpretation of the statute.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: Do you stick with the argument made below that it’s unlawful to file an amicus brief?

GENERAL KAGAN: Justice Kennedy —

JUSTICE KENNEDY: I think I’m right in saying it that that was the argument below.

GENERAL KAGAN: Yes, I think that would be a service. In other words, not an amicus brief just to make sure that we understand each other. The Petitioners can file amicus briefs in a case that might involve the PKK or the LTTE for themselves, but to the extent that a lawyer drafts an amicus brief for the PKK or for the LTTE, that that’s the amicus party, then that indeed would be prohibited.

And lo and behold, just three months after this decision, the FBI is investigating a bunch of peace activists for their efforts to foster peace in areas contested by these terrorist organizations.

Now, I have no idea what Kagan thinks about this raid (though she used Hezbollah as her example in the argument, not the Tamil Tiger groups actually named in the suit, and Hezbollah is one of the organizations named in the warrants). But even during the argument, she sustained a fiction that the Court’s interpretation of material support to include peace efforts would be an unlikely use of prosecutorial discretion.

GENERAL KAGAN: First, because with respect to overbreadth, all of those uncertain or even unconstitutional applications will be but a thimbleful, compared to the ocean full of completely legitimate applications of this statute.

[snip]

GENERAL KAGAN: Of course, that’s a different thing as to how prosecutorial judgment is used to decide which are the high-priority cases and which are the low-priority cases.

Or maybe she just badly misinterpreted what FBI’s priorities really were.

Is this How the Yemeni-American Partnership Works?

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In my post on the government’s invocation of state secrets to hide the things national security officials have already leaked to the press, I linked to David Ignatius’ largely-overlooked report that Yemen first asked us to target Anwar al-Awlaki, and only thereafter did we get around to targeting him and telling courts they had no business asking why we had done so.

Last October, the Yemeni government came to the CIA with a request: Could the agency collect intelligence that might help target the network of a U.S.-born al-Qaeda recruiter named Anwar al-Aulaqi?

Keep that in mind as you read this story about a Yemeni woman trying to FOIA information about US involvement in her US citizen husband’s abduction in Yemen. (h/t Political Carnival)

As [Sharif Mobley] drank tea on a Sana’a street, eight masked men burst from two white vans and tried to grab him. Terrified, he ran, but was brought crashing to the ground by two bullets to his legs and bundled into one of the vans.

The method of abduction may have been brutal, but it was not the work of a rebel group or criminal gang. Instead, the armed men were Yemeni security agents, and in a set of legal documents seen by Al Jazeera, Mobley’s lawyers allege they were operating on behalf of the US government.

Now, the story only presents the Mobley’s family’s story, in which they claim that while Mobley had had contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, he never had any dealings or awareness of ties to al Qaeda.

“Sharif openly admits that he had been in limited contact with al-Awlaki,” says Cori Crider, Mobley’s  lawyer. “But he categorically denies that he was involved in or aware of any plot or link to al-Qaeda.”

Perhaps Mobley’s family is just spinning, downplaying more developed ties between Mobley and AQAP. Though note that any contact with al-Awlaki would have happened before Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was designated a terrorist organization, and even then, the government claims that terrorist designation should not limit others’ First Amendment rights to associate with members of designated terrorist groups.

Whether or not Mobley’s story is correct or not, it doesn’t dismiss the other allegation: that someone apparently tied to the US embassy raided the Mobley family home, all while pretending that Yemen–not the US–had sole custody of Mobley.

When she realised her husband was missing, [Mobley’s wife, Nzinga Saba Islam] immediately reported his disappearance to the embassy, where she was told to file a report with Yemeni police.

That night, at 1am, as she lay worrying about what had happened to her husband, the documents say around 15 men burst into the family home. The family were held at gunpoint and searched, while the house was raided and items confiscated.

Nzinga has told lawyers that the following morning she returned to the US embassy. As she waited to file a report about what had happened, she insists that she saw the man who had led the raid on her home wearing a US embassy pass.

“He was, as far as Nzinga could tell, in charge of the raid on her home,” Crider says. “She asked the embassy about him and what he was doing there, but embassy officials never gave her a straight answer.”

The documents allege that embassy officials listened to what Nzinga had to say, and began to question her about her husband’s activities in Yemen. Amongst the items she says they showed her were photographs taken during the raid on the house.

Mind you, none of this would be new. By all appearances, the US has used Pakistan as a proxy for arresting US citizens to avoid granting those citizens the legal rights they otherwise would have.

But the move is troubling, given the appearance that Yemen pushed this crack-down before the US did, and given the US government’s refusal to make public their larger case against al-Awlaki.

Anwar al-Awlaki is very quickly becoming our next surrogate bogeyman in the war on terror (the one designed to distract from the continued freedom of the people who actually targeted us on 9/11). And along with that, the government seems intent on hanging a whole lot more terrorist designations on people–including American citizens–without ever showing the evidence that al-Awlaki himself was operational.

Obama’s Panopticon

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It seems the Administration has declared today “Power Grab Monday.”

Charlie Savage reports that the government is again asking for a “technical fix” (as they have during PATRIOT debates) that extends CALEA to cover all the Toobz.

Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

And Ellen Nakashima reports an effort to create what sounds like a US version of SWIFT, covering all international transactions, no matter how small.

The Obama administration wants to require U.S. banks to report all electronic money transfers into and out of the country, a dramatic expansion in efforts to counter terrorist financing and money laundering.

Officials say the information would help them spot the sort of transfers that helped finance the al-Qaeda hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They say the expanded financial data would allow anti-terrorist agencies to better understand normal money-flow patterns so they can spot abnormal activity.

Financial institutions are now required to report to the Treasury Department transactions in excess of $10,000 and others they deem suspicious. The new rule would require banks to disclose even the smallest transfers.

Any communication you make, any financial transaction you make, the Obama Administration thinks nine years after 9/11 is the time to demand such access.

I suspect it’s only the corporations can save us from this power grab. Not only are corporations doing business in the US not going to want all their transactions accessible by the government (we’ve already stolen enough corporate secrets), but banks aren’t going to want to track transactions at that level.

Though who knows? Maybe the corporations are ready to join Obama’s panopticon?