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Jeff Sessions: George Bush Waited 7 Years to Set Up Military Commissions

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Jeff Sessions has already seized on yesterday’s release of DOJ’s list of 390 terrorist convictions and twisted it to sustain his claim that we need to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a military commission. Much of his response consists of making non-specific claims about individuals on the list in an attempt to minimize the applicability of all these convictions.

The great majority of the terrorism cases cited by the Attorney General are in no way comparable to KSM’s case. Most of the convictions in this list are for far lesser offenses, such as document fraud and immigration violations, while only a small handful concern conduct even remotely similar to a mass-casualty terrorist attack. And none are on the level of KSM, who masterminded 9/11.

Among the cases cited is that of Zaccarias Moussaoui, which was fraught with procedural problems, delays, appeals, risks to classified evidence, and even a lone holdout juror who spared the 20th hijacker the death penalty. Due to gaps in federal law, many of the problems prosecutors encountered in the Moussaoui trial will be experienced in future terrorism trials.

[snip]

The figures released today also contradict the Attorney General’s claims on the Christmas Day Bomber: two of the terrorists on this list were placed in military custody precisely because the criminal justice system severely limits our ability to gather intelligence. [my emphasis]

But by far the most amusing attack on this list is Jeff Sessions’ explanation–after pointing to the procedural problems and delays in the Moussaoui trial–that most of these 390 convictions happened before military commissions were operational, which he dates to 2008.

Moreover, the overwhelming bulk of these cases are for acts committed by U.S. citizens—which KSM and the Christmas Bomber are not—and occurred before military commissions became fully operational in 2008. [my emphasis]

Someone better tell George Bush, who claims to have set up military commissions on November 13, 2001. And someone better tell Salim Hamdan, who was first charged in a military commission in 2004, and whose appeal of the terms of the military commissions lasted two years, after which there was another two year delay until his trial began.

In other words, Jeff Sessions deals with precisely the kind of delay we can expect for any future military commissions–one of the biggest reasons not to use them–by simply ignoring the delays that have already happened.

DOJ: Scott Roeder Is Not a Terrorist

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Since we’ve been talking about domestic right wing terrorism of late, I wanted to elaborate on a point I made here. Today, the Department of Justice released a list of all the terrorist-related individuals it found guilty in civilian courts since 9/11. And Scott Roeder, who was found guilty of killing George Tiller on January 29, 2010, is not on that list.

There are two reasons why it might be churlish for me to make that observation. First, the list was released in response to a specific request from the Senate Judiciary Committee in the context of debates over civilian versus military trials for Gitmo detainees, which suggests SJC was interested in a certain kind of terrorist (though, at least in Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich’s response, it seems that the request was not specific to international terrorists). Also, in response to that request, DOJ simply provided a list started during the Bush Administration, and the list was explicitly limited to international terrorists.

The National Security Division’s International Terrorism and Terrorism-Related Statistics Chart tracks convictions resulting from international terrorism investigations conducted since September 11, 2001, including investigations of terrorist acts planned or committed outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States over which Federal criminal jurisdiction exists and those within the United States involving international terrorists and terrorist groups.

In other words, to develop a list of all terrorists–rather than just the terrorists the National Security Division considers terrorists–it would have to cull out the names of Americans who also engaged in terrorism.

So what would it take, then, for DOJ to consider a guy who stalked a doctor for years, who collaborated with a number of other people engaged in intimidation and violence, and ultimately gunned a man down while he was worshiping at church, a terrorist?

If we find evidence that, in addition to harboring pedophiles, Pope Benedict and the American Catholic Bishops have been intimidating women and their doctors, would Scott Roeder be considered a terrorist (recognizing, of course, there is no allegation that the Catholic Church endorses violence of the type Roeder used)? Or would it take a brown man, involved in the plot, for DOJ to consider this terrorism?

The 390 Terrorists Convicted in Civilian Courts

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The Department of Justice has just sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee answering early questions about how many terrorists have been convicted or plead guilty in civilian courts. Between those convicted of terrorism-related crimes (150) and individuals with ties to international terrorism convicted of other crimes (like obstruction or perjury–the total here is 240), 390 people have been sent to prison using our civilian courts.

As you might recall, there has been some debate over what the “real” number of terrorists convicted in civilian courts is. After the Obama Administration used the same number the Bush Administration had–a number which combines terrorist charges with non-terrorist charges–Republicans squawked.

But as DOJ points out, having other charges available is one of the advantages to the civilian courts:

The second category includes a variety of other statutes (like fraud, firearms offenses, false statements, or obstruction of justice) where the investigation involved an identified link to international terrorism. There have been more than 240 individuals charged in such cases since September 11, 2001. Examples of the international terrorism nexus identified in some of these cases have also been provided for your review.Prosecuting terror-related targets using these latter offenses is often an effective method—and sometimes the only available method—of deterring and disrupting potential terrorist planning and support activities. Indeed, one of the great strengths of the criminal justice system is the broad range of offenses that are available to arrest and convict individuals believed to be linked to terrorism, even if a terrorism offense cannot be established. Of course, an aggressive and wide-ranging terrorism investigation will net individuals with varying degrees of culpability and involvement in terrorist activity, as the NSD chart reflects. Arresting and convicting both major and minor operatives, supporters, and facilitators can have crippling effects on terrorists’ ability to carry out their plans. [my emphasis]

This is a point David Kris made in Congressional testimony last year–there are actually charges you can’t use in a military commission but which you can use in a civilian court (though the Obama Administration appears prepared to press the limits of MCs anyway).

The list of terrorists convicted itself is interesting in its own right. Among other things, it demonstrates the degree to which terrorism is still largely–though not exclusively–targeted at Muslims (though in the first page itself there are individuals tied to the Tamil Tigers and one woman from FARC who was quietly rounded up last year after the Ingrid Betancourt rescue).

Not on this list? Right-wing American terrorists like Scott Roeder.

John Adams and Patrick Fitzgerald

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About a million of you, seeing Isikoff and Hosenball’s and Justin Elliott’s coverage of a story about Fitzgerald getting involved in an investigation of how photos of torturers ended up at Gitmo have emailed me the story in alarm. (This is a story I first covered 8 days ago.)

I’m going to attribute the alarm to the fact that neither Newsweek nor Elliott mention Bill Gertz’s much more detailed and informative story that first broke this. And to the use of phrases like “most feared,” “paparazzi,” “national controversy,” “star prosecutor,” which sensationalize the story more than it appears to merit, at least thus far.

Here’s what I think is going on:

1) DOJ has been investigating the John Adams Project since last August to find out how photographs of torturers got into the hands of detainees at Gitmo. The JAP has employed a Private Investigator to track down likely interrogators of detainees, to take pictures, get a positive ID, and once done, call those interrogators as witnesses in legal proceedings. DOJ appears concerned that JAP may have made info–learned confidentially in the course of defending these detainees–available to those detainees, and therefore violated the protective order that all defense attorneys work under. Yet JAP says they collected all the info independently, which basically means the contractors in question just got caught using bad tradecraft.

2) DOJ appears to believe no crime was committed and was preparing a report to say as much for John Brennan, who will then brief Obama on it.

3) But CIA cried foul at DOJ’s determination, claiming that because one of the lawyers involved, Donald Vieira, is a former Democratic House Intelligence staffer, he is biased.  They seem to be suggesting that Vieira got briefed on something while at HPSCI that has biased him in this case, yet according to the CIA’s own records, he was not involved in any of the more explosive briefings on torture (so the claim is probably bullshit in any case). After CIA accused Vieira of bias, he recused himself from the investigation.

4) So apparently to replace Vieira and attempt to retain some hold on DOJ’s disintegrating prosecutorial discretion, DOJ brought in Patrick Fitzgerald to pick up with the investigation. Fitz, of course, a) has impeccable national security credentials, and b) has the most experience in the country investigating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, having investigated the Torturer-in-Chief and his Chief of Staff for outing CIA spy Valerie Plame. In other words, DOJ brought in a guy whom CIA can’t bitch about, presumably to shut down this controversy, not inflame it.

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The Prisoner Shellgame

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On Friday, I pointed out that Eric Holder and Dennis Blair used language in a letter on Gitmo’s detainees that suggests some subset of the detainees at Gitmo is not covered by Obama’s Executive Order requiring some resolution to their status.

In recent days, a couple of you have linked to articles about two other shell games the Obama Administration appears to be playing with its detainees. First, it appears that when we cede control over Iraqi prisons to Iraqis later this year, we will retain custody of about 100 detainees from Camp Cropper (where we’ve kept Iraqi High Value Detainees), purportedly at the request of the Iraqi government.

The U.S. military said it plans a July 15 handover of Camp Cropper, which has held high-level detainees such as Saddam Hussein and members of his regime on the outskirts of Baghdad. The roughly 2,900 detainees in Camp Cropper are currently the only Iraqi detainees in American custody, down from a wartime high of 90,000, the U.S. military said.At the Iraqi government’s request, the U.S. will continue to hold about 100 detainees who pose a high security risk, Quantock said, although he was not more specific about who would be kept in custody.

Meanwhile, someone (it’s not clear who) is proposing keeping international detainees at Bagram (which would basically mean Bagram would become a colder less accessible Gitmo). (h/t Jim White–and see this excellent Adam Serwer post on the Bagram debate from last November)

That the option of detaining suspects captured outside Afghanistan at Bagram is being contemplated reflects a recognition by the Obama administration that it has few other places to hold and interrogate foreign prisoners without giving them access to the U.S. court system, the officials said.

Without a location outside the United States for sending prisoners, the administration must resort to turning the suspects over to foreign governments, bringing them to the U.S. or even killing them.

In one case last year, U.S. special operations forces killed an Al Qaeda-linked suspect named Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in a helicopter attack in southern Somalia rather than trying to capture him, a U.S. official said. Officials had debated trying to take him alive but decided against doing so in part because of uncertainty over where to hold him, the official added.

U.S. officials find such options unappealing for handling suspects they want to question but lack the evidence to prosecute. For such suspects, a facility such as Bagram, north of Kabul, remains necessary, officials said, even as they acknowledged that having it in Afghanistan could complicate McCrystal’s mission.

Mind you, some of these prisoner shell games may be related. While it would seem that the US will have to hold Iraqis within Iraq, if there really are people at Gitmo who don’t qualify for the Task Force review, I can imagine that someone would like to keep them away from a prison in Illinois where their presence may become an issue.

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The “Detainees Subject to the Review”

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MadDog linked to the letter that Dennis Blair and Eric Holder sent the Senate describing the process by which 6 agencies and a 100 staffers meticulously decided the ultimate fate of Gitmo detainees–who could be released or imprisoned elsewhere, who could be tried, and (presumably) who had to be held indefinitely. It might be a reassuring letter for its portrayal of the deliberation and rationality applied to Gitmo detainees.

Except for this phrase, repeated twice: “all 240 detainees subject to the review.”

After carefully considering each case, the six agencies reached unanimous agreement on disposition determinations for all 240 detainees subject to the review.

[snip]

After all of the deliberations described above, the DNI-either personally for cases considered by Principals or by delegation to the ODNI official on the Review Panel-agreed with the other five agencies on disposition determinations for all 240 detainees subject to the review.

This process, apparently doesn’t apply to all detainees. Only the detainees “subject to the review.” Now perhaps they’re just making the distinction between Gitmo detainees and those in some black hole in Bagram or some other secret site. But it sure seems to be referring just to Gitmo detainees. In which case, there must be other Gitmo detainees, outside of the 240, who are not “subject to the review.”

Why? Who are they?

Executive Order 13492, which instituted this review, provides two potential hints. First, it provides this definition:

(c) “Individuals currently detained at Guantánamo” and “individuals covered by this order” mean individuals currently detained by the Department of Defense in facilities at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base whom the Department of Defense has ever determined to be, or treated as, enemy combatants.

This would seem to leave out detainees held by CIA or contractors (maybe?). And it would seem to leave out those detainees whom DOD had simply never called nor treated as an enemy combatant. You know those family members Mary keeps asking about? They wouldn’t be enemy combatants, would they?

The EO also suggests DOD would have authority over any other detainees.

(a) Nothing in this order shall prejudice the authority of the Secretary of Defense to determine the disposition of any detainees not covered by this order.

So while this letter to the Senate sounds like a wonderful work of rational deliberation, it also seems to hint at some remaining Kafkaesque hole, whereby some people who have not been deemed enemy combatants remain in some arbitrary limbo not covered by this great display of rational deliberation.

Update: Hmmm is right: the EO lets the Secretary of Defense do what he will with all the other detainees (which I guess makes it especially useful if your Secretary of Defense is an old Chief Spook). I’ve fixed the post accordingly.

The Anonymous Coward Calling Holder Weak

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Time has another one of those Rahm v. Holder profiles. It is notable from the slew of other ones for two reasons.

The anonymous source calling Holder a coward

First, the story features several main sources for this story: Lindsey Graham, speaking on the record.

Holder, issuing no-nonsense statements like this, on the record:

And it’s Holder’s experience in the law-enforcement system that makes him such a strong believer in its ability to put terrorists like KSM away forever. “We should have great faith in the resilience of our systems, the resilience of our people, the toughness that has always separated Americans from other peoples in this world, and that’s what’s made this country great,” he says.

And at least one anonymous White House aide (AKA Rahm).

What I especially love about about that anonymous White House aide is that the guy who is too chicken to speak on the record seems to be parroting GOP attacks calling Holder weak on terror.

Republicans, meanwhile, were busy turning Holder into the poster child for White House weakness on terrorism, and some polls showed that most Americans agreed with them. “The only two people who still believe in civilian trials,” says one of the meeting’s attendees, “are Holder and the President.”

Brave anonymous White House aide!! Singlehandedly fighting terrorism by hiding behind anonymity!!

Lindsey’s July (?) meeting with Holder and December meeting with Obama

The article also provides a useful timeline for two meetings Lindsey had with the Administration, first an July (or August) meeting with Holder.

By July, Obama had asked Holder to decide whether it was feasible to prosecute KSM in a civilian court. Holder chewed on that question for weeks. Meanwhile, Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who opposed civilian trials, asked Holder to meet with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a key centrist vote on matters of counterterrorism. Graham told Holder he strongly opposed civilian trials for the alleged 9/11 conspirators and that they could affect his support for closing Guantánamo Bay prison, a key Obama goal.

And then a December meeting with Obama.

When Obama met with Graham in early December, the Senator laid out his case against civilian trials. But the President said he thought Holder had the better side of the argument. “I just agreed to disagree with the President on that issue,” Graham told TIME.

Those meetings are interesting both for the way they match up to the timeline of the attacks on Holder and Greg Craig (which started in earnest around the time of the first meeting, and culminated in the December meeting after Craig had been ousted.

I’d really love to know the logic for the Obama meeting. After all, this was before the Christmas day bombing, when the Administration was still basking in the success of the foiled Zazi plot. And it came at a time when the Democrats had 60 votes in the Senate.

So why meeting with Lindsey?

It sure suggests the push against civilian trials is more about politics than efficacy.

But we knew that.

When Lawyers Equate Law with PR

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Jack Goldsmith and Ben Wittes have an op-ed up in which, claiming that the PR value to military commissions is minimal, Obama should just not give KSM a trial of any sort. They make a clever move in which they first cursorily dismiss the value of civilian trials.

A trial potentially adds three things: the option of the death penalty; enhanced legitimacy in some quarters, especially abroad; and a certain catharsis and historical judgment in the form of a criminal verdict.

These are non-trivial benefits, but as the battle over the past few months has shown, they come at great cost. Domestically, the political costs of trying high-level terrorists in federal courts have become exorbitant for the administration — unaffordably high, it seems to be turning out.

They make no consideration of the importance of a trial for our rule of law, our system of justice. And fail to consider any potential direct benefit in showing potential terrorists that we don’t stoop to the arbitrary authoritarian ways of the oppressive countries many of them are fighting. This is not about impressing Europe, as they seem to suggest, but about impressing young Saudis or Pakistanis, showing them the rule of law.

And from there, Goldsmith and Wittes treat the political debate over civilian trials equally cursorily. They might consider, after all, the reasons why civilian trials have become so costly: the fact that Dick Cheney and his daughter, trying to avoid any consequences for instituting a torture regime, are paying a lot of money to sow fear about civilian trials.

It’s a political ploy. Nothing more. Yet one that plays to the weaknesses of someone like Rahm, who apparently doesn’t see much value in defending principle. But the political cost doesn’t have to be that high; Obama has just let it be made so.

And so, with those five lines dismissing the value of the rule of law on which our country is based, they go on to focus more on their straw man target, military commissions.

The legal and political risks of using the ill-fated military commission system are also significant. After the Supreme Court offered a road map for a legally defensible system, Congress has twice given its blessing. But serious legal issues remain unresolved, including the validity of the non-traditional criminal charges that will be central to the commissions’ success and the role of the Geneva Conventions. Sorting out these and dozens of other novel legal issues raised by commissions will take years and might render them ineffectual. Such foundational uncertainty makes commissions a less than ideal forum for trying Mohammed.

Moreover, the public relations and related legitimacy benefits of trying Mohammed in a commission are not that great, especially since the administration insists that he will remain in detention even if acquitted. The possibility that the administration might try him in a commission has been met with anger and disdain by the American left and many European elites, who think commissions are as illegitimate as they believe the underlying detention system to be. They will work hard to delegitimize their proceedings too.

In short, a military commission trial might achieve slight public relations and legitimacy benefits over continued military detention of Mohammed, and might facilitate his martyrdom by ultimately allowing the government to put him to death. But this would add so little to the military detention that the administration already regards as legitimate that a trial isn’t worth the effort, cost and political fight it would take.

Now, there’s a reason Goldsmith and Wittes focus so much more closely on military commissions than civilian trials. That’s because there are real drawbacks to them. They are legally dicey, they are likely to result in years of delay, they actually offer fewer tools with which to try KSM successfully. And of course, Goldsmith and Wittes don’t acknowledge that that is one key basis for criticism of military commissions: they simply won’t be as effective as civilian trials. Instead, they falsely suggest that leftist opposition to military commissions is some nihilist attempt to discredit the trials just for the sake of principle. By making the criticism of not just the left but the military into a strawman, they avoid the fundamental agreement between us and them about the weaknesses of military commissions.

And so, with that canard, Goldsmith and Wittes dismiss the PR value of military commissions, too.

Poof! By weighing our entire legal system as one big PR gimmick (and failing to do that very well) Goldsmith and Wittes manage to decide it’s just not worth all that much.

But the clever op-ed is valuable for something. It shows what a slippery slope Obama is on. Because once you fail to make the case for the principle of rule of law, when you fail to point out the benefits it offers both as a necessary step to reclaim the America that used to inspire others rather than inflame them and as a proven way to adjudicate crimes, then there’s little to distinguish the benefits of civilian trials and the arbitrary rule of indefinite detention. (I’d also say that, short of pointing out that most candidates for indefinite detention are such because they’ve been tortured into craziness by Goldsmith’s former employers, you fail to point out how Cheney’s mistakes have gotten us here.)

Even Eric Holder, who genuinely wants civilian trials, has conceded the possible efficacy of military commissions and indefinite detention. And once you’ve done that, rather than defend the principle and efficacy of civilian trials, you’re on the slippery slope where our entire rule of law is just a big PR ploy. One that can be discarded for arbitrary indefinite detention when it becomes convenient.

Whose Non-Disclosure Was Worse: Bybee’s or Holder’s?

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John Kyl has officially announced he intends to waste an oversight hearing on March 23 beating up Eric Holder because he did not disclose an amicus brief opposing unlimited Presidential power.

Kyl told members of the committee that panel Republicans will question the Attorney General about his 2004 amicus brief that recommended the Supreme Court stop the Bush administration’s efforts to try Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant.

[snip]

Kyl called the non-disclosure of the brief “rather distressing.”

“Are we expected to believe that then-nominee Holder…forgot about his role in one of this country’s most politicized terrorism cases?” Kyl asked.

And the other Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are practicing their pout-rage, as well.

Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the committee, said he was “deeply concerned” by Mr. Holder’s failure to disclose the brief during his confirmation.

“Not only was the Attorney General required to provide the brief as part of his confirmation, but the opinions expressed in it go to the heart of his responsibilities in matters of national security,” Mr. Sessions said in a statement. “This is an extremely serious matter and the Attorney general will have to address it.”

Now, as I said earlier, Holder clearly should have disclosed this brief–though his views were already well known.

But he’s not the first nominee to go before SJC who failed to disclose key legal writings. After all, Jay Bybee secured a lifetime appointment as an Appeals Court Judge without disclosing the fact that he rubber stamped legal sanction for torture. And unlike Holder, Bybee’s actions were totally unknown at the time. At the time, just one Democrat, Jane Harman, had even been briefed that CIA was doing the torture (though Pelosi had been briefed that they were considering torture), the memos specifically had not even been revealed to her, and even if she knew about it, she would not have been permitted to share it with SJC.

And yet, barring Bybee’s resignation or prosecution in some international court, Bybee will be serving on the 9th Circuit long after Holder has moved on as Attorney General.

So whose non-disclosure is more of a problem? Jay Bybee, who failed to hint that he had authorized torture? Or Eric Holder, whose views were well-known and tested during his confirmation hearing?

The Terrorist Sympathizers Grassley Doesn’t Mention: Chiquita

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Predictably, Politico piles onto the latest installment of the McCarthyist attacks on DOJ, largely repeating the attack as made by Dana Perino and Bill Burck. The one thing it does add is some discussion of what Eric Holder should have disclosed at his confirmation hearings last year.

Holder didn’t mention the brief during his confirmation hearings to be Attorney General, even though the Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire required him to list all Supreme Court amicus briefs he was party to. His questionnaire lists briefs in only three cases: Miller-El v. Cockrell, Johnson v. Bush and D.C. and Fenty v. Heller.

A Justice Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said “the brief should have been disclosed,” but had been “ unfortunately and inadvertently” left out in the documents submitted to the committee.

“ In any event,” he said, “ the Attorney General has publicly discussed his positions on detention policy on many occasions, including at his confirmation hearings.

Justice Department officials also didn’t mention the briefs in the letter they sent to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) informing Congress that nine of the department’s political appointees either “represented detainees [or] … either contributed to amicus briefs in detainee-related cases or were otherwise involved in advocacy on behalf of detainees.”

Now, I agree that Holder should have disclosed all this.

But I’m also interested in the tizzy surrounding whether Holder should have disclosed himself in response the questions Chuck Grassley posed on terrorist sympathizers at DOJ. Granted, originally asked were definitely targeted toward creating this witchhunt–that is, to detainees at Gitmo, rather than to the representation of terrorists and their affiliates generally.

But if we’re going to discuss Holder’s “biases,” shouldn’t we start with Holder’s representation of Chiquita, and particularly his success at getting several white Republican men off of charges that they knowing supported right wing Colombian terrorists? Particularly given the way Bush’s DOJ facilitated that process?

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