By Mark Esposito, Weekend Guy
Ahmed Abu Khatallah’s boat docked yesterday and the reputed Benghazi attacks mastermind was met with a contingent of U.S. Marshals, Navy security and a phalanx of Justice Department types all eager to hear his gilded version of events and to usher him to a US federal courtroom near the White House where the processes of the US justice system could start slowly grinding now in earnest. He pled not guilty for anyone interested. Before his arrival, however, a cacophony of Republican lawmakers decided to weigh in on his treatment aboard the trans-Atlantic cruise ship, the USS New York, provided by the Navy.
As many know, Abu Khatallah was captured in a clandestine operation conducted by US special ops aided by shadowy figures from both inside and out of the Libyan power structure who lured him to a villa where US forces made the arrest. Abu Khattallah, designated by the State Department as a global terrorist, was regarded as a prime suspect due to his affiliation with a group he helped to found and known as the Ansar al-Sharia. A fundamentalist militia group that rose to power after the fall of Gaddafi, it has claimed responsibility for the attack against the U.S. Embassy and American school in Tunis, leading the Tunisian government to declare it a terrorist organization. The group has been implicated in attacks against Tunisian security forces, assassinations of Tunisian political figures, and attempted suicide bombings of locations that tourists frequent. Not exactly the kind of guys you bring home to dinner.
Abu Khatallah’s capture was coup for an administration looking to change the dialog on the Benghazi attack which left four Americans dead including US ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Criticized for everything from the response (or lack thereof) to the attack by US security forces as well as even the characterization of the attack itself, the administration has been attempting to change the narrative since 2012. In his new book, Blood Feud, excerpted by the New York Post, author Edward Klein claims President Obama pressured then Sect’y of State Hillary Clinton to issue a release stating the attack was a spontaneous uprising relating to an obscure internet video criticizing Islam. Knowing the attack coincided with the anniversary of the 2001 attacks on US soil, Clinton bristled. According to Klein, Clinton said, “Mr. President, that story isn’t credible. Among other things, it ignores the fact that the attack occurred on 9/11.” But the president was adamant. He said, ‘Hillary, I need you to put out a State Department release as soon as possible.”
Against this political backdrop, Abu Khatallah’s handling had high stakes politically as well as serious system of justice ramifications. His questioning began without benefit of his Miranda rights and like so many alleged terrorists, Abu Khatallah couldn’t stop talking. He kept talking, denying his role, but doing the “tell-all” about everyone else he knew even after his was read Miranda warnings. Miranda, as most folks know, harkens the landmark Supreme Court case declaring criminal suspects must be advised of their constitutional rights to counsel and against self-incrimination before questioning. The ruling led to the exclusionary rule which bars evidence obtained in violation of this notice. Though steadily chipped away at by conservative courts since the opinion was written it’s been more or less the law of the land since it bubbled up from Arizona in 1966.
Though a darling of civil libertarians since its uttering it’s been just as much a step-child to Republicans. Nixon and Reagan both ran against the idea of so-called Miranda rights and countless other Republicans saw it as a boon for the guilty based on a “technicality” summarized ever so succinctly by Boston Police Commissioner Edmund “Big Ed” McNamara who noted his frustration saying, “Criminal trials no longer will be a search for the truth, but a search for technical error.” The furor died down but the sentiment in Republican circles to eliminate Miranda continued. Republican dominated courts joined in confirming numerous exceptions including the public safety exception which allowed the dispensing of Miranda warnings by the police interrogators if ” necessary to secure their own safety or the safety of the public.” That case involved a gun hidden in a supermarket by a robbery suspect that could have been found by children. But like so many cases where the facts seem to justify the principle espoused, other facts don’t fit so easy with our sense of justice and fair play.
Fast forward now to modern-day and the so-called War on Terror. Republicans seized on Miranda again shortly after the 9/11 jet attacks to insist on a weakened protections for terror suspects. A national debate ensued over enemy combatants versus criminal suspects. What were terrorists? International criminals bent on havoc or a non-uniformed army who declared war on the US and its allies ? President George Bush chose the latter and the war on terrorists and Miranda was back front and center. Republicans have consistently decried Miranda protections even on those occasions when suspects were processed in American courts rather than the military tribunal system handled by the US armed forces for enemy combatants in the holding center at Guantanamo Bay. There in a not-so-distant US military base, Miranda rights are just a pipe dream.
Since 2001, Republicans have mounted a constant drumbeat against Miranda protections for terror suspects. In 2010, Republicans from every quarter decried the use of Miranda in the interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man behind the failed Christmas Day airline bombing plot. The Huffington Post reports that Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said of the news that Shahzad was cooperating even after getting his Miranda rights read to him: “That is a stroke of good luck. What if he had not waived them and just quit talking, said ‘I want my lawyer’?”
“Maybe we got lucky and [Shahzad] said I will go ahead and talk to you anyway,” said another Senate Republican, Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), after learning the same. “But you didn’t know that when you read [him] the rights. So I stand by what I said — it is better in these kinds of cases to get the intelligence first and then, if you decide you want to proceed with an Article 3 prosecution, then read the Miranda rights.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) went further writing in a letter to Holder that, “We remain deeply troubled that this paramount requirement of national security was ignored — or worse yet, not recognized — due to the administration’s preoccupation with reading the Christmas Day bomber his Miranda rights.” Preoccupation with constitutional rights a bad thing? For Senate Republicans it surely was.
In March 2011, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, filed the Ensuring the Collection of Critical Intelligence Act of 2011, which required the Justice Department to consult with the director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense before giving terrorists Miranda rights. That bill died in committee, but nearly identical language was included in the 2012 defense authorization bill which said in part, that before seeking an indictment or otherwise charging an individual in a federal court, the Attorney General shall consult with the director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense about “whether the more appropriate forum for prosecution would be a federal court or a military commission; and whether the individual should be held in civilian custody or military custody pending prosecution.” This was an end run around Miranda by diverting a suspect to the nearly Miranda-free zone of the military commissions. It also made the charging decision a political one rather than one based on the nature of the acts of the suspect.
In 2013, in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) demanded answers from Attorney General Eric Holder on why the DOJ allowed a magistrate judge to inform terror suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of his Miranda rights while the FBI was in the midst of interrogating him earlier this week. Sounding apoplectic, ex-FBI agent Rogers said, “We can’t have, in a case like this, the judiciary deciding, because it’s on TV and it might look bad for them … that they were going to somehow intercede in this. It’s confusing, it is horrible, [a] God-awful policy, and dangerous to the greater community,” he said. “And we have got to get to the bottom of this, and we’ve got to fix it right now.” Ok, then. How about an aspirin or a quaalude there Mister Agent Rogers? By the way, Tsarnaev talked, too.
Now in 2014, Republicans are still complaining about reading Miranda rights to suspects who still decide to talk. “I have serious concerns that conducting a rushed interrogation onboard a ship and then turning Abu Khatallah over to our civilian courts risks losing critical intelligence that could lead us to other terrorists or prevent future attacks,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-New Hampshire, said in a statement. Criminal defense lawyer … yep I said that right … South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham chimed in that, “If they bring him to the United States, they’re going to Mirandize this guy, and it would be a mistake for the ages to read this guy his Miranda rights.” Graham must be the most conflicted man in Washington DC and that takes some doing.
In its defense to following the constitution, the White House has pointed out that “they have successfully tried a number of terrorists domestically and that no new captives have gone to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in years.” Not exactly a “Four score and twenty years ago” defense of the union or the constitution that makes it so, but it’s a start.
Abu Khatallah was appointed a public defender, Michele Peterson. He was ordered to remain in custody until hearings set for Wednesday and Friday. No comment yet from Republicans yet on that announcement or whether Gideon v. Wainwright is yet another liberal impediment to the War on Terror.
The American public’s reaction is mixed to Miranda protections for terror suspects with just about 51% in favor. What do you think?
Source: CNN
~Mark Esposito, Weekend Contributor
By the way and for better or worse, the views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not necessarily those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art is solely the author’s decision and responsibility. No infringement of intellectual property rights is intended and will be remedied upon notice from the owner. Fair use is however asserted for such inclusions of quotes, excerpts, photos, art, and the like.
Terrorism is a crime. Criminals are read their rights.
Bob, Esq.:
By the way since we’re naming each other literary figures, I christen you Don Quixote — your tilting at windmills in the name of principle is quite charming. No matter how hopeless, no matter how far!
Bob, Esq:
As I said on the other thread war is war. I equate them all since they have the same result for the unwary or starry-eyed dreamers who think wishing away the enemy will make them go away. You can afford all the due process protection to savages that you want to, they will still be savages and you’ll be just as dead.
Villefort: “Since I answered your questions how about you taking on the one I asked Bruce at 8:53 pm? What degree of due process would you afford an enemy of the nation in your sights and consisting of your own fellow citizens? Please don’t beg off by claiming CSA soldiers were not fellow citizens. Neither the courts nor Lincoln ever took that view.”
Monsieur Villefort,
Are you equating “the war on terror” with the civil war?
Why not the revolutionary war too?
After all, the British were fellow citizens as well.
Perhaps Mike Appleton would like to indulge you on this diversion of yours.
PCS,
Either we are governed by the words of the Preamble, Constitution and Bill of Rights or we are governed by nothing.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
That’s where Karl Marx comes in.
Given that the executive and legislative are “ambitious,” it is absolutely essential and imperative that the SCOTUS be unbiased, apolitical and comprehensively objective. It is not. It acts ideologically with impunity.
Whom do you know acts correctly without the threat of penalty?
Either the words of the Preamble, Constitution and Bill of Rights have definitions and meanings that all 9 justices of the SCOTUS can objectively read and agree on resulting in unanimous decisions, or America is a free-for-all.
Looks like a collectivist free-for-all to me.
The inmates have taken over the asylum.
PCS,
Either we are governed by the words of the Preamble, Constitution and Bill of Rights or we are governed by nothing.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
That’s where Karl Marx comes in.
Given that the executive and legislative are “ambitious,” it is absolutely essential and imperative that the SCOTUS be unbiased, apolitical and comprehensively objective. It is not. It acts ideologically with impunity.
Whom do you know acts correctly without the threat of penalty?
Either the words of the Preamble, Constitution and Bill of Rights have definitions and meanings that all 9 justices of the SCOTUS can objectively read and agree on resulting in unanimous decisions, or America is a free-for-all.
Looks like a collectivist free-for-all to me.
The inmates have taken over the asylum.
Bob, Esq:
Still waiting for your answer to my question. Where should we set up those hearing tents? Maybe on the Emmitsburg Pike? It’s about half way from Spangler’s Woods to Hancock’s line.
Mespo: “I think I was referring to enemy combatants captured on or near the battlefield. To conflate them with US citizens over whom we have jurisdiction and control intentionally omits an important distinction recognized in US and international law.”
Monsieur Villefort,
Sheikh al-Alwaki was an American citizen suspected of terrorism. How did he lose his rights as a U.S. citizen to due process and a fair trial?
You said it yourself. The U.S. can kill suspects based on the level of difficulty in bringing them to our shores for justice. That is the maxim you have adopted.
Villefort: “If that’s more than a rhetorical device, it’s either intentionally obtuse or downright disingenuous. We were talking about enemies of the US engaged in active war against us not some pedophile who violated US law. There is a dramatic difference between the two as any bright eighth grader could tell you.”
Speaking of rhetorical devices, all the executive need do to exercise wartime powers in prosecution of a particular crime is to declare war upon it.
An eighth grader would be simple minded enough to buy your argument; since the eighth grader would not take the time to analyze the actual degree of harm said “enemy” is inflicting on the state on a yearly basis.
Odds of dying in a terrorist attack: 1 in 9,300,000.
The odds of becoming a victim of human trafficking or the sex slave trade are far greater. The odds of a child becoming a victim of a pedophile are far greater.
Do I hear it said that we owe a greater amount of care to prevent the lesser amount of harm?
Monsieur Villefort, how are men who systematically prey upon little children, imprisoning them, raping them and often times killing them, less worthy of the Château d’If than your occasional terrorist?
By what principle do you make the distinction?
Villefort: “I’ll say it again, I have no problem with detention of enemy combatants like I have no problem with detaining POWs in our prior wars. Likewise I have no problem if the government wants to trigger the mechanisms of our legal system and try them under US law. That’s the prerogative of the attacked state in my view”
The prerogative of the state? You mean the prerogative of an executive granted the power of a traditional monarch.
Abu Khatallah has been granted due process rights not because the law demands it; but because it pleases His Majesty Obama.
And Monsieur Villefort has come here to sing praise to our great and merciful King who saw fit to afford Abu Khatallah Miranda rights and due process rights; even when those vile republicans spoke out against it.
Your oath Monsieur Villefort.
I, Mark Villefort Esposito, do utterly testify and declare in my conscience that the King’s Highness is the only supreme governor of this realm, and of all other his Highness’s dominions and countries, as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes, as temporal, and that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence or authority ecclesiastical or spiritual within this realm; and therefore I do utterly renounce and forsake all former semblance of constitutional law, foreign jurisdictions, powers, superiorities and authorities, and do promise that from henceforth I shall bear faith and true allegiance to the King’s Highness and his political party, and to my power shall assist and defend all jurisdictions, pre-eminences, privileges and authorities granted or belonging to the King’s Highness and his party, or united or annexed to the imperial crown of this realm.
SWM, I like pete, he doesn’t like me. C’est la vie.
Here is Wikipedia on Unitard:
Contortionist in a unitard
Equestrian vaulters typically perform in unitards.
A unitard is a skin-tight one-piece garment with long legs and sometimes long sleeves, usually stopping at the wrists and ankles. It differs from a leotard in that a leotard does not have long legs. The garment can be considered to be a combination of a leotard and tights. The unitard is basically the wrestling singlet minus the tights, although some wrestlers do prefer to wear the tights in order to further accentuate their uniform and codpiece.
Unitards are worn by acrobats, gymnasts, dancers, equestrian vaulters, athletes, circus performers, amateur wrestlers and superheroes, as well as others who require overall body coverage without impeding flexibility. They come in a variety of different colors. Superheroes in comics and films are frequently depicted wearing unitards. When making sophisticated animated films, such as Avatar, zentai unitards are worn by actors to detect their movements.
Freddie Mercury, former high school wrestler and the lead singer of the rock band Queen, was known for wearing checkered unitards/singlets and spandex during their concerts in the late 1970s. In 1985, Anne White’s decision to wear a white unitard for the first two sets of a match in the Women’s Singles Championship at Wimbledon was widely reported.[1][2] Kevin Barnes, of the rock band of Montreal, wore a white unitard in the video for the single “Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse”. Jack Mehoff was appointed by President Obama to be presiding officer of Unitards United which is a political action fund.
Is the employment of the word “unitard” some breach of civility? It sounds like a variation of “retard”. Not that I mind. I wish to use the word myself on the blog. When Eddie Cantor’s son lost his election in VA then I could have said that he was a “friggin unitard”. Or when Benghazi left the job at the jewelry store and attacked our embassy I could say that Hillary the 8th was a unitard.
Is there a way to run this word by the civility board? I might change my blog name to some version of unitard. Some people think that I am forgetful and then themselves forget what it was that I had to say. Its all in a name.
Al – look up the term.
I consider the particular Boston ma Bomber needs been Mirandized.
rib marine
I think it is simple. If federal civilian law enforcement arrested someone then the Miranda procedures would not be different from any other criminal suspect.
I suppose it amounts to how far the courts are going to be willing to allow the Public Safety Exception.
Nick:
I can go with silk, too.
That’s too bad nick because pete is a good guy and a class act.
— Bob, You are becoming a prime time player here! —
ROTFL
Mespo, I hate tight clothing. I often go commando, so leotards are not even an option. I also hate sweaters, too itchy. I do like silk!!
Nick – you might consider the unitard. Form fitting and comfortable.
I get the distinct impression I’m on pete’s shit list. Of course, dog’s love to eat shit so…!
Bob, You are becoming a prime time player here!
============================== Huh! He was here long before I was here, and he has always hated Obama.
Paul:
Just wait til someone gets me talking about Gibbon!