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A Remembrance of Judge John Roll

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200px-Chief_Judge_John_RollIt has now been three years to the day since Jared Lee Loughner went to the the Safeway Supermarket at Ina and Oracle Roads in Tucson where Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was holding her “Congress on the Corner” meeting for her constituents. The rest, as they say, is history. Tragic history. Giffords was grievously wounded, six lives taken and others seriously wounded.

One of the lives lost was that of the Chief Judge of the Arizona District, John Roll. This morning, I saw Andrew Cohen of CBS News tweet out a quick remembrance of Judge Roll, with links to two articles Andrew wrote back in 2011 on him and his loss. The articles are here and here, and are excellent, please click through and read them. The point in the second article regarding the dangers our federal judiciary face is especially salient.

I too might have have tweeted or reposted an old post I had done on Judge Roll, but I did not really do one. I knew John Roll, and at one time long ago, well before she was a Congresswoman, knew Gabby Giffords. I also lived, for a little over a year in graduate school, in the Catalina Footlills not that far from Ina and Oracle, and knew the Safeway store where it all happened as well. The wounds, and the longer term scars, from the January 8, 2011 shooting were too real for me back then. I mostly funneled whatever insight and thoughts I had to other, more traditional reporters, and others, covering the shootings and the legal proceedings as to Loughner. In fact, it took me three weeks to even complete the post I was writing that Saturday morning the moment the news of the shooting started coming in on the television. The only real substantive post I recall writing was on the way the federal government bigfooted the state authorities, to wit Pima County Attorney Barb LaWall, as to the prosecution of Jared Loughner.

So, after seeing Andrew Cohen’s remembrance, and with a little prodding from Andrew, I’d like to give my own brief honor to Judge John Roll.

As I said above, I knew John, and he was one of the finest men, not to mention judges, I have ever met. Kind, generous, helpful and compassionate. Tough as a judge, but fair, and extremely smart. Just a good man and great judge. The very kind of traits that led him to drop by Gabby’s local Congress on the Corner event three years ago today. Roll had been in downtown Tucson at Saturday Mass, knew of Gabby’s event and decided to stop in on the way home and say hi.

I knew Judge Roll almost exclusively professionally, although I did talk to him at a few social occasions over the years too. I first came in contact with him in the late 1980’s when, as a relatively new and wet behind the ears criminal trial attorney, I had a felony trial case down in Tucson that went sideways. The emergency remedy here in such circumstances is an extraordinary writ proceeding, known as a “special action”. They are hurried affairs, and back then were referred to a single “hot judge”, who was basically the on call jurist for the week for special actions. I, by sheer luck, got John Roll.

52ac00b293652.imageI was out of my normal home in the Phoenix area, and in the jurisdiction of a completely different division of the Court of Appeals, Division Two in Tucson. A lesser judge could likely have chewed me up and spit me out because I was unfamiliar with that division’s nuances, and I had a couple of technical pleading errors. Instead, I ran into the most gracious, helpful and understanding of men and jurists. John Roll made such an impression that I went out of my way to stop in and chat with him any time I was down in Tucson, whether in the Court of Appeals, or later in Federal District Court after he was nominated and confirmed in the last portion of George H.W. Bush’s term in office.

Looking back, it was really quite remarkable; you just do not get that kind of interaction, and gain that kind of relationship, with judges very much any more. But that is precisely the kind of guy John Roll was.

The death of John Roll cost Arizona not only a great man, but the District its chief judge. Despite the “emergency status” Arizona was already under at the time of his death, only now is the Obama White House getting the District of Arizona close to fully staffed with judges. But time marches on, and it will here, but let Judge John Roll not be forgotten.

A more physical remembrance is embodied in the John M. Roll United States Courthouse, a satellite courthouse for the Southern Division of Arizona’s Federal Court District located in Yuma, Arizona. The facility had been planned under John’s leadership of the District, but was completed and named for him after his death. The John M. Roll United States Courthouse opened for business on Monday December 16, 2013.

Rest in peace John Roll.

CNN: Only Brown People Can Be Lone Wolves

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Just in time for the 9/11 fearmongering season, CNN comes out with this ridiculous article on lone wolf terrorists.

It starts by correctly identifying Khalid Aldawsari as a lone wolf (at least as far as is publicly known thus far). Piggybacking on an Obama comment, it then raises the example of Anders Behring Breivik, which leads to the following passage.

The president told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer: “When you’ve got one person who is deranged or driven by a hateful ideology, they can do a lot of damage, and it’s a lot harder to trace those lone wolf operators.” He pointed to the case of Anders Breivik, who went on a bombing and shooting rampage in July in Norway, killing 77 people. No evidence has been uncovered linking Breivik to other conspirators.

A growing wave
The Norway attack and the Aldawsari case show how modern technological tools, especially the availability of vast amounts of information useful for bomb making and targeting, have made lone terrorists more dangerous than ever before.

In the last two years, eight of the 14 Islamist terrorist plots on U.S. soil involved individuals with no ties to terrorist organizations or other co-conspirators.

These included plans to blow up buildings in Illinois and Texas in September 2009, the November 2009 Fort Hood shootings allegedly carried out by U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, an alleged plot to bomb a tree-lighting ceremony in Portland in November 2010, and another aimed at blowing up an Army recruiting station near Baltimore the following month.

As a threshold matter, while “no evidence has been uncovered” thus far that ties Breivik to others, Norwegian investigators are just getting around to interviewing some of the people mentioned in Breivik’s manifesto and the prosecutor does “not rule out the possibility” he had accomplices.

But what’s more troubling about this passage is the way it mentions Breivik to support the claim that “lone terrorists [are] more dangerous than ever before,” but then completely ignores the problem of any right wing terrorism save Breivik’s! Given that Aldawsari was nowhere close to actually making a bomb, and given that the only actually executed attack mentioned in this passage (the article later mentions Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, a Muslim convert who killed one soldier at an Army recruiting center) is that of Nidal Hasan, a man trained by the US Government who relied on nothing more than readily accessible guns, it’s not clear that technology is making these Islamic terrorists all that more dangerous.

Indeed, the article ignores that almost every single attack it describes here was solved–but also created in part–by the FBI. It was not the Internet that taught Mohamed Osman Mohamud how to make a bomb. It was the FBI.

Which supports the conclusion that the US Government–whether it be the Army or the FBI–is the thing making Islamic “lone wolves” more dangerous, not technology. Not that I believe that is or necessarily has to be the case (though while we’re talking our dangerous government I will mention the still unsolved anthrax attack), but it is what CNN’s evidence supports.

Yet, as the example of Breivik does show, apparent lone wolves can be dangerous. So why does CNN let this assertion stand?

A senior U.S. counter-terrorism official told CNN that lone assailants have been responsible for every deadly terrorist attack in the West since June 2009, when a U.S. servicemen was shot dead outside a recruiting station in Arkansas by a convert to Islam, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad.

The stat is almost meaningless in any case; what this counter-terrorism official spewing nonsense under cover of anonymity really means is that there have been exactly two “deadly terrorist attacks” committed by Muslims in the US since June 2009, Muhammad’s and Hasan’s, and both happened to be lone wolves.

But this senior counter-terrorism official appears to be ignorant of or ignoring other deadly terrorist attacks, such as Scott Roeder’s killing of George Tiller (the attack actually happened on May 31, 2009, and the DOJ investigated, but did not charge, Roeder’s accomplices in the anti-choice movement), James von Brunn’s attack on the Holocaust Museum, Jerry and Joseph Kane’s attack on a police station, or Jared Lee Loughner’s attack on Gabby Giffords. Sure, some of these count as lone wolves (others as organized members of right wing terrorist groups), but it seems these attacks–as well as the other right wing terrorist attacks that did not result in death–deserve to be part of this discussion, not least because it in part supports CNN’s discussion of how reading extremist materials online may radicalize potential terrorists.

And then, finally, there’s CNN’s uncritical invocation of informants.

Counter-terrorism analysts say that outreach by U.S. law enforcement into Muslim communities is key in providing early warnings of threats. U.S. law enforcement agencies have also kept a watchful eye over individuals who may be moving toward violent extremism. Warning signs include ties individuals may have developed with known Islamist radicals or online interaction through jihadist websites.

Undercover agents and informants have also played a key role in helping the FBI and other U.S. law enforcement agencies uncover threats. The New York Police Department has developed the most extensive informant network in the country and has the largest number of undercover police officers assigned to terrorism cases. It has also developed a Cyber Intelligence Unit in which undercover “cyber agents” track the online activities of suspected violent extremists and interact with them online to gauge the potential threat they pose.

I’ll respond to CNN’s approving mention of the NYPD’s spy system by reminding, again, that it failed to find the two most dangerous terrorists, Faisal Shahzad and Najibullah Zazi, in spite of ties to Zazi’s imam.

But I’ll also suggest that if this effort remains focused primarily on Muslims it will continue to miss the MLK Day bombers, the George Roeders, and indeed, the Breiviks of the world.

CNN’s biggest piece of evidence that apparent lone wolf terrorists can be dangerous is the lethality of Breivik’s attack. But the entire article takes the example of a right wing terrorist as justification to otherwise ignore the problem of right wing terrorism.