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Court cuts and politicians push police
powers
By William Fisher
New York, New York, Oct. 14 (IPS) — As one key provision
of the USA PATRIOT Act — a central plank of the Bush administration’s
“war on terror” — was being ruled unconstitutional, some
federal politicians were using reform of the country’s intelligence
community as a vehicle for enacting parts of “PATRIOT Act II.”
Intelligence reform was a principal recommendation of the so-called
9/11 Commission, and the Senate last week passed bipartisan legislation
that closely followed the body’s recommendations. But the version
devised by Congress’ other body, the House of Representatives,
added a number of new provisions critics say are actually elements of
a “PATRIOT II” proposal, and threaten civil rights.
The House bill includes an amendment to allow the government to detain
foreign terror suspects and deport them to countries known to practice
detainee torture once the State Department has received assurances they
would not be harmed in those nations.
Representative John Hostettler, author of the amendment, said it would
“protect the American people from dangerous aliens.” But a
fellow member of President George W. Bush’s Republican Party, Rep.
Christopher H. Smith, said the bill would result in “bona fide
refugees being returned to their persecutors.”
Washington-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the measure
“undercuts US commitments to vulnerable populations, and it does
so disingenuously by dressing up its proposals in the language of terrorism,
when in fact many of its provisions have nothing to do with terrorism.
“Instead, the bill will put populations of immigrants, such as
refugees and persons without any links to terrorism, at risk of serious
abuse,” added HRW in a statement.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the amendments
“additionally detract from the findings of the 9/11 Commission
and expand PATRIOT Act powers and further scapegoat immigrants.”
The House deportation provision would in effect provide statutory authority
to a practice already widely used by such agencies as the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA). Known as “extreme rendition,” it involves turning
people in custody over to countries whose prisons are known to engage
in torture.
At present, “extreme rendition” is carried out under the authority
of a presidential order, known as a “finding.” The last such
order was signed by former President Bill Clinton.
The CIA has repeatedly claimed it receives assurances from receiving
countries that prisoners will not be abused. But a number of deportees
allege they were tortured while in detention in other countries, and
some are now suing the US government.
For example, Canadian computer engineer Maher Arar was detained in New
York after arriving on a flight from Tunisia. US agents deported him
to Syria, the country of his birth, where Arar charges he was tortured
for the 10 months he was imprisoned there.
Now back in Canada, Arar is suing the US government. He was not charged
with a crime, either in the United States or in Syria.
In another similar action, the CIA and Swedish security forces allegedly
kidnapped two Egyptian nationals who were seeking asylum in Sweden,
and flew them in a CIA-chartered aircraft back to Egypt, where they
were imprisoned and say they were tortured.
As reported by The Washington Post, former CIA Director George Tenet
said the agency participated in more than 70 renditions in the years
before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. In 1999 and 2000 alone,
the Post said, “the CIA and FBI participated in two dozen renditions.”
Other human rights advocates, including US-based Human Rights First,
say the deportation provision “contradicts pledges President Bush
made after the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal erupted this spring
that the United States would stand behind the UN Convention Against
Torture.”
In that scandal, photos showing naked, hooded Iraqi prisoners being
humiliated and abused by US soldiers were leaked to the media, generating
an international outcry. Charges have since been laid against low-ranking
soldiers but critics say the go-ahead for abuse came from senior members
of the Bush administration.
If adopted, the House measure could result in the torture of hundreds
of people now held in the United States, who could be sent to such countries
as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan and Pakistan, all of which have
dubious human rights records, adds Human Rights First.
However, many observers feel the House and Senate versions of the intelligence
reform legislation are too far apart to be reconciled by a House-Senate
committee, in which case both versions of the law would have to be reintroduced
later.
The House debate took place soon after a federal judge struck down one
of the key provisions of the PATRIOT Act.
US District Judge Victor Marreo ruled in favor of the ACLU, which challenged
the power of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to use the Act
to demand confidential financial records from companies without court
approval, as part of terrorism investigations.
The ruling was the first to reject any of the new surveillance powers
authorized by the PATRIOT Act, which was passed with little debate in
the chaotic days following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Among other powers, the Act gave the government authority to monitor
phones or computers used by a suspect or target of a special Justice
Department warrant, and allowed the detention of non-citizens without
formal charges.
PATRIOT Act II, known as the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003,
has never been introduced in Congress. However, a leaked Justice Department
draft refers to expanded surveillance and prosecutorial powers, including
secret arrests and detentions, and the ability to issue top-secret Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court warrants to include US citizens suspected
of terrorist activities.
Marreo’s decision struck down Section 505 of the PATRIOT Act on
grounds that it violates free speech rights under the First Amendment
to the US Constitution, as well as the right to be free from unreasonable
searches, in the Fourth Amendment.
The Act also bars companies and other recipients of subpoenas from revealing
that they have received the FBI demand for records. Marreo held that
this permanent ban was a violation of free speech rights.
The Justice Department has not yet said if it will appeal the rulings,
but legal experts believe an appeal is probable.
The verdicts were the second blow to the Bush administration’s
anti-terrorism policies. In June, the US Supreme Court ruled that terror
suspects being held in US facilities like Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have
a right to use the US judicial system to challenge their confinement,
defeating the president’s assertion he holds sweeping powers to
hold “enemy combatants” indefinitely.
Bush policies ‘fuel violence,’
say 500 US scholars
By Jim Lobe
Washington, DC, Oct. 13 (IPS) — The Bush administration’s
failure to accept advice on Iraq from its military and foreign service
officers has led to policies that have fueled the insurgency against
US-led forces in the occupied nation, says a letter signed by some 500
national security specialists.
Released Oct. 12 by a group called Security Scholars for a Sensible
Foreign Policy (S3FP), the letter calls the 2003 invasion and subsequent
occupation of Iraq the United States’ “most misguided”
policy since the Vietnam War.
“The results of this policy have been overwhelmingly negative for
US interests,” according to the group, which called for a “fundamental
reassessment” in both the US strategy in Iraq and its implementation.
“We’re advising the administration, which is already in a
deep hole, to stop digging,” said Barry Posen, the Ford international
professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), one of the organizers of S3FP, which includes some of the most
eminent US experts on national-security policy and on the Middle East
and the Arab world.
Among the signers are six of the last seven presidents of the American
Political Science Association (APSA) and professors who teach in more
than 150 colleges and universities in 40 states.
Besides Posen, the main organizers included Stanley Kaufman of the University
of Delaware; Michael Brown, director of Security Studies at Georgetown
University; Michael Desch, who holds the Robert M Gates Chair in Intelligence
and National Security Decision-Making at the Bush School of government
at Texas A & M University; and Jessica Stern, at the Kennedy School
of Government at Harvard University, who also served in a senior counter-terrorism
post in the National Security Council during the former Clinton administration.
“I think it is telling that so many specialists on international
relations, who rarely agree on anything, are unified in their position
on the high costs that the US is incurring from this war,” said
Robert Keohane of Duke University in North Carolina.
Their critique mirrors an unprecedented statement released by 27 retired
top-ranking foreign service and military officials in June, many of
whom said they had voted for Bush in the 2000 election.
The 27, called Diplomats for Change, accused the administration of leading
the country “into an ill-planned and costly war from which exit
is uncertain.” As their name suggested, they called for Bush to
be defeated in 2004.
The new statement’s signatories also includes a number of retired
government officials, some career military and foreign service officers,
and political appointees in Democratic and Republican administrations,
who are currently working at colleges and universities.
Much of their critique echoes arguments voiced by Democratic presidential
candidate John Kerry who, in recent weeks, has pounded away at alleged
failures in the way Bush has prosecuted the “war on terrorism,”
particularly with respect to Iraq.
“We judge that the current American policy centered around the
war in Iraq is the most misguided one since the Vietnam period, one
which harms the cause of the struggle against extreme Islamist terrorists,”
S3FP writes.
“One result has been a great distortion in the terms of public
debate on foreign and national security policy — an emphasis on
speculation instead of facts, on mythology instead of calculation and
on misplaced moralizing over considerations of national interest.”
The scholars applauded the Bush administration for its initial focus
on destroying Afghanistan bases of the al-Qaida terrorist group, but
charged that its subsequent “failure to engage sufficient US troops
to capture or kill the mass of al-Qaida fighters in the later stages
of that war was a great blunder.”
The letter noted that “many of the justifications” provided
by the administration for the Iraq war, including an operational relationship
between al-Qaida and former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his programs
for weapons of mass destruction (WMD), have proven “untrue”
and that North Korea and Pakistan pose much greater risks of nuclear
proliferation to terrorists.
“Even on moral grounds, the case for war was dubious: the war itself
has killed over a thousand Americans and unknown thousands of Iraqis,
and if the threat of civil war becomes reality, ordinary Iraqis could
be even worse off than they were under Saddam Hussein,” it argues.
Since the invasion, policy errors “have created a situation in
Iraq worse than it needed to be,” adds the letter, which said the
administration ignored advice from the Army Chief of Staff on the need
for many more US troops to provide security and from the State Department
and other US agencies on how reconstruction could be carried out.
“As a result, Iraqi popular dismay at the lack of security, jobs
or reliable electric power fuels much of the violent opposition to the
US military presence, while the war itself has drawn in terrorists from
outside Iraq.”
While Hussein’s removal was “desirable,” according to
the scholars, the actual benefit to the United States was “small,”
particularly because Iraq posed far less of a threat to the United States
or its allies than the administration had asserted.
Worse, the occupation’s failures, such as the abuse of prisoners
at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere, have acted as a recruitment tool
for al-Qaida and similar groups throughout the region, according to
the letter.
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